Once in a great while there comes along a book that is radical in the true and intellectual sense of the word: one that shows us how to break categories of conventional wisdom rather than classroom windows, to uproot the stale flowers of secular piety rather than the flowers in the president’s garden. The Unheavenly City is such a book. It is also a book that offers a vast amount of insight into that most obsessive of current national interests, the city and its future in American polity. . . .