Review of Martin Devecka’s Broken Cities

I generally enjoy writing book reviews, but for whatever reason, I haven’t been invited to write very many in recent years. As a result, I tend to get pretty excited when I am asked to write a review and almost immediately start to fret about how I can be thoughtful, fair, critical, and constructive. 

This fretting inevitably leads to the fussing with whatever draft I manage to concoct for weeks and weeks and second guessing even the most banal observations. The only thing that prevents me from spiraling into some kind of intellectual lock up is the need to get the review off my desk before it is no longer relevant.

Here’s a link to a review that I’ve more or less finished of Martin Devecka’s Broken Cities. If you’re interested in the development of a review from a rough draft to a somewhat more polished final version, you can check out my preliminary draft here.

Martin Devecka, Broken Cities: a historical sociology of ruins. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020. 184 p. ISBN 9781421438429. $34.95. 

Look for the final version wherever you find fine reviews on the interwebs.