I TEND TO RECOIL FROM DUTY. For this reason, despite allegations that I am a historian of US cities in the postwar era, I had never sat down and read cover-to-cover the book that, for many lay readers and not a few specialists, constitutes the first and last word on the subject. Over and over, students in the classes I teach would invoke the marquee ideas from this text, less as argument than as doxa, settled points upon which no agreement need be solicited. In a way that permitted the appearance of great wisdom, I would nod calmly, ecumenically. My serene visage, I imagined, communicated a kind of benevolent omniscience. Of course there is room in me for all of this. But—and I wonder if anyone noticed—I would take no real position. Inwardly, I would shrug my shoulders. Something in me didn’t want to go there.
Self-conscious about this charade and mindful of the compulsory entrepreneurialism of our times, I decided to make self-improvement pay. I would assuage my conscience, become one of the good ones, by offering a short course that would obligate me to conduct a t…
