Seattle and the Demons of Ambition
A Love Story
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Founded in 1851 as a four-cabin outpost named "New York Pretty-Soon," Seattle has long struggled with an identity crisis. From a nearly lawless port, to a sedate, conventional company town defined by Boeing Aircraft, to an accessible paradise for artists and recovering urbanites, Seattle repeatedly tried and failed to become bigger, wealthier, more like "major league" cities.
In the late 1980s, Seattle's time suddenly arrived. Microsoft, Amazon, Starbucks, McCaw Cellular/AT&T Wireless, and dozens of local dot.com startups began to drive a booming national economy. Seattle became a city of instant millionaires and brand name shopping, skyscrapers and sports franchises-- the place everyone wanted to visit, topping lists of America's "most desirable" cities. But with such wealth came consequences: overdevelopment, paralyzing traffic, racial and class divisions, and a street population of teenagers discarded by the new culture, whose rage and disaffection fueled the rise of bands such as Nirvana.
Striving to reach its ambitions, Seattle seemed to be losing the struggle for its soul. And when it hosted the 1999 World Trade Organization convention, the city's conflicted personalities clashed, as violent riots by residents and a coalition of protestors left the downtown decimated and the nation transfixed by the spectacle of globalization gone wrong.
In Seattle and the Demons of Ambition, Fred Moody uses his own background as a native son, along with wide-ranging encounters with others, to trace the growing pains of the city he loves. Profiling Bill Gates and never-quite-champion football coach Chuck Knox, a pair of ambitious entrepreneurs and a homeless sculptor once profiled in the New Yorker, grunge music superstars and the preyed-upon children of the documentary "Streetwise," Moody offers a dramatic, entertaining, and insightful portrait of the city that defined economic and technological change in the America of the 1990s
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Most cities have tales of rises and falls, yet if the stories aren't glamorous or notorious, only their citizens want to hear them. Moody's tale of Seattle bucks that trend. Editor of the Seattle Weekly and a Washington State native, Moody combines historical background and individual experience for a funky mix of personal reflection and fascinating urban tales. Although the author jumps from one subject to another, his writing style packs as much humor and easy flow as a Kurt Cobain tune. With crisp phrasing and love for a good quote, he describes a city that has weathered not just Nirvana and Microsoft, but also characters like Ivar Haglund, a boisterous seafood purveyor who thought up slogans like "Keep Clam." Moody begins his ruminations with the 1999 WTO riots and explains how Seattle's ignorance, self-absorption and blind self-importance fueled an already explosive situation. Although it's obvious he has deep affection for his home, Moody doesn't sport rose-colored glasses. He self-deprecatingly details his lack of ambition in the late 1970s, a quality shared by many Seattleites. As Bill Gates made the '80s into a software whirlwind and grunge began seeping in a decade later, Moody navigates the city's changes with awe and suspicion. He slams Seattle for a backward attitude about immigration, poorly planned initiatives and coldness toward the homeless and the disenfranchised. Yet this is indeed a love story. Moody feels for Seattle the way one might love a relative who has a good heart but does some truly asinine things, despite some ire, he akes that relative worth knowing.