Human Scale Revisited: A New Look at the Classic Case for a Decentralist Future

I read two of Sale's books in the 1970s and found them helpful and credible. This book, unfortunately, was just the opposite. The scholarship is shoddy and the historical ignorance overwhelming. There is virtually no claim that you can "take to the bank." As a friend said, "He lost me in the first when he claimed something had dropped 400%." Of course, that is a mathematical impossibility. Perhaps the fact Sale is no longer teaching means that he lost his peer review sources. Whatever has happened, this book was a severe disappointment compared to the original Human Scale and his Rise of the Southern Rim.

Everyone should read this book. It's an extraordinary look at what happens to civilization and what can go wrong when things become overgrown, too big, too much, and too diverse. Not healthy for humans or for all life on the planet. We need to rethink how we do things and this book gives you that perspective.

The original work was fantastic, the update only adds.

Good

I had the opportunity to read HUMAN SCALE in its first incarnation when it was originally published back in 1980. Then, it was a much needed attempt to not only slow down the rapid growth of our institutions which were drifting further and further away from people the institutions purported to serve but to highlight the damage being done to society by turning a blind eye to what was happening. What was a cautionary book then has become a necessary call-to-arms now. Much of the book has been updated, necessary because the problems has been exacerbated. Since our country already is torn into two seemingly separate entities—one red, the other blue—a further re-alignment according to geography and interests into far smaller entities is not a far-fetched idea. It is, instead, a workable, sustainable answer to a problem, indeed, a dissolution, that only grows more severe as the years pass. Read the book. The writing is clear, concise, and always compelling. You’ll soon be gazing out the window wishing it could be. And it can.

A good companion to Nassim Taleb's work on 'anti-fragile'. Basically, big and complex = fragile.