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A review by ajkhn
Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism by Stephen Graham
4.0
This is pretty much my ideal non-fiction book. Graham has a solid thesis he's investigating; the militarization of urban life, and he pulls in lots of stories from all over the Earth in order to show what militarization looks in different contexts. Graham is more than a little angry, and he's calm enough to express his point very well also.
It's a very well-measured read through how cities are being reconstructed. He borrows a lot from Der Derian, Eyal Weziman, and Derek Gregory. In fact, my main quibble with the book is that there are times he borrows so heavily that it seems like he's not really adding anything for pages at a time, just gesturing at Gregory. To be fair, I'd gesture at Gregory, too.
So it's a great sort of pop-geography book with some politics thrown in. It gets you looking at a city skeptically. This is a good thing.
It's a very well-measured read through how cities are being reconstructed. He borrows a lot from Der Derian, Eyal Weziman, and Derek Gregory. In fact, my main quibble with the book is that there are times he borrows so heavily that it seems like he's not really adding anything for pages at a time, just gesturing at Gregory. To be fair, I'd gesture at Gregory, too.
So it's a great sort of pop-geography book with some politics thrown in. It gets you looking at a city skeptically. This is a good thing.