Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

“Illuminating and beautifully written, this book calls into sharp relief the nature of the world we now inhabit.”—New Yorker

“A magisterial critique of top-down social planning.”—Jennifer Schuessler, New York Times

“One of the most profound and illuminating studies of this century to have been published in recent decades.”—John Gray, New York Times Book Review

Compulsory ujamaa villages in Tanzania, collectivization in Russia, Le Corbusier’s urban planning theory realized in Brasília, the ...