In England we have not yet been completely embowelled of our natural entrails… We have not been drawn and trussed, in order that we may be filled, like stuffed birds in a museum, with chaff and rags and paltry blurred shreds of paper about the rights of man. We preserve the whole of our feelings still native and entire, unsophisticated by pedantry and infidelity. We have real hearts of flesh and blood beating in our bosoms.
Jane Jacobs
Johnson is a huge admirer of Jacobs, and discusses her extensively in this book and in previous works.