The Lost City: The Forgotten Virtues of Community in America

For the past three years I have been engaging in an odd form of time travel, spending whole chunks of each day wandering on the planet of the 1950s, and then being jolted back home, sometimes when I really wanted to remain a little longer.

I am aware that this has been a little disconcerting for those at home and at work who expected me to be fully attentive to the present. They have been patient with my distractions and I am grateful to them for their patience.

I am equally grateful to those who indulged my desire to pursue this prcject in the first place. I am lucky enough to work for Governing, magazine and for its parent, the Times Publishing Company of St. Petersburg, Florida -- institutions that embody the loyalty and commitment of the 1950s in a decade when they are difficult to sustain.The preservation of those values is in large part the achievement of Andy Barnes, and I wish to thank him for that, as well as for supporting me in this venture and others in the past. Andy Corty was equally gracious in trusting me to spend a week each month on time travel and to return to the office safely. More than anyone, however, Peter Harkness, the editor and publisher of Governing, made this project possible, as he has so many ideas of mine, more than a few of them slightly wacky, over the last twenty years.

Wherever I went in Chicago, I found people who were willing to share with me their memories of the 1950s and their insights about living in a very different time. Dozens of residents and former

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