Alan Ehrenhalt

Recent Articles

• Small-Town Prophets
• Nov 1, 2001
• Granville Hicks, the literary critic, would have been a hundred years old a few weeks ago. Hicks died in 1982, and so he isn't exactly a household name anymore--I didn't know much about him myself until I ran across a copy of "Small Town," his portrait of the village of Grafton, New York, written just at the end of World War II. But the story is worth remembering, both for the unusual life the author led and for the ideas he emerged with after decades of personal struggle.

• The Commonwealth of Boastfulness
• Oct 1, 2001
• When I started writing this column, I promised myself I wouldn't use it as a soapbox for personal grudges or quarrels. It can come off as bad sportsmanship, and most of the time, it bores the reader. But some opportunities are just too juicy to pass up.

• The Politics of a Hole in the Ground
• Sep 1, 2001
• At the intersection of Wilson and Highland streets, a few blocks from where I live in Arlington, Virginia, there is a big, gaping hole in the ground. It isn't much to look at, as you might expect. But it's a hole in the ground with a rich history. If you will indulge me in a few paragraphs of local nostalgia, I think I can use it to draw some lessons about the ways of growth, planning and survival these days in metropolitan America.

• Electoral Overload
• Aug 1, 2001
• Abolishing elected treasurers, auditors and commissioners would probably do more good than harm.

• 'Rightsizing' the Legislature
• Jul 1, 2001
• I can't imagine many of you have been to the New Hampshire House of Representatives. But I can help visualize it for you: Just close your eyes and think of an old public high school auditorium.

• The Merchant Mayor
• Jul 1, 2001
• For years, Boston's Tom Menino has argued that retail commerce is the key to revitalizing urban neighborhoods. Other cities have begun to listen.

• Why We Don't Have it Made in the Shade
• Jun 1, 2001
• A few years ago, I went for a drive through the winding streets of Emery Manor, a subdivision of small, Levittown-like rambler houses built in the Chicago suburbs in the early 1950s. People in the older neighborhoods nearby said terrible things about Emery Manor when it was going up: They called it a drab, tasteless collection of identical tiny boxes, scarcely better than shacks.

• Can you be an Urbanist and Still Like Cities?
• May 1, 2001
• The 20th century produced a pantheon of brilliant urban thinkers and planners. Some built, some mostly wrote, some did both. Some did better than others at translating their ideas into reality. But one way or another, we are living with the consequences of their vision:

• Sometimes Blaming the Victim Makes Sense
• Apr 1, 2001
• Back when Lester Maddox was governor of Georgia, in the late 1960s, there was a riot at the state prison. Reporters asked him what he planned to do about the conditions that caused the trouble. Maddox rejected the entire premise of the question. "There's nothing wrong with our prison system," he said. "We just don't have a very good class of prisoners anymore."

• The Drug-War Conundrum
• Mar 1, 2001
• A few minutes into the movie "Traffic," in a Washington, D.C., cocktail party scene, an amiable red-haired man offers some wisdom about the nation's drug problem: "You'll never solve this on the supply side."

• Nepotism and the Meat AX
• Feb 1, 2001
• We Americans profess not to like nepotism very much, but when we see it on a grand enough scale, we're intrigued. We're not bothered by a presidential election in which both of the candidates owe every political triumph in life to the exploits of their fathers. We can get used to the idea of the president's brother as attorney general, or the president's wife as chief domestic policy adviser.
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• Secrets of Urban Bodybuilding
• Jan 1, 2001
• If you live in Louisville, this is the time of year when it hurts your pride a little bit just to pick up the sports page. The cities that are your natural rivals--cities that used to rank right alongside you in size, image and self-confidence--are winning priceless national publicity on the professional football field.

• Boldness Without Bluster
• Dec 1, 2000
• The mayor of Salt Lake City, Rocky Anderson, is talking about an experiment he launched earlier this year. Once a week, his department heads and senior managers are required to appear at an open meeting and answer questions from ordinary voters. "I learned that from the Sandinistas," he says.

• Putting Practice Into Theory
• Nov 1, 2000
• One afternoon in the fall of 1995, John McDonough tells us in his new book, "Experiencing Politics," he was sitting in his seat on the floor of the Massachusetts House of Representatives as the chamber prepared to vote on a huge tax break for Raytheon, the locally based defense contractor.

• Lessons from the Lobster Legislature
• Oct 1, 2000
• If there's any group of American citizens you wouldn't expect to find at the cutting edge of political reform, it's the lobster fishermen along the coast of Maine. Not only do they have a national reputation for being cranky loners--they readily accept it.