Mortgage on America. By Leonard Downie, Jr.

The basic thesis of this book is that real estate speculation is the cause of both urban blight and of suburban sprawl. The book is an interesting one, but unfortunately it is flawed. It suffers from Downie's constant use of the pejorative as a substitute for logical analysis: after all, one man's "speculator" or "promoter" is another man's "entrepreneur." More important, the book suffers from Downie's casual assumption that because his theory explains some cases, it therefore explains all cases.