Printer-friendly VersionEmail to a Friend

A KIND OF GENIUS
Herb Sturz and Society’s Toughest Problems

$27.95

Herb Sturz served as New York City’s deputy mayor for criminal justice under Mayor Ed Koch in the late 1970s and then as chairman of the City Planning Commission. His little-known career as a social entrepreneur, however, gets the top billing in A Kind of Genius.

New York Times journalist Sam Roberts writes about the man who reformed the bail system, began the Vera Institute of Justice, established affordable inner-city housing, and provided innovative solutions to social problems.

Mr. Roberts is urban affairs correspondent of the New York Times. He has also written for the New York Times Magazine, Daily News, New Republic, and New York Magazine. He has authored several books.

“Yet the most important point of his [Sturz’s] life—and of this admirable book—is that lasting social change can be achieved by demonstrating how everyone benefits when we improve the lives of those at the bottom. Radical rhetoric and the pressure of protest can push the world forward, but so do nudging, persuading and, yes, manipulating the establishment into accepting reforms that are efficient as well as humane.” —Joe Conason, The New York Times

“Roberts does a fine job of showing how Sturz succeeded not only by having good ideas but also by appealing to ‘government’s enlightened self-interest.’ Systems change when systems see a selfish reason to change. In our time of national transformation, it’s a valuable lesson.” —Liam Julian, The Denver Post •