<p>In 1960, Jane Jacobs lashed out against the highway construction and so-called slum clearing that defined development of the time in her groundbreaking book “The Death and Life of Great American Cities.” Now 88 and living in Toronto, Jacobs remains as passionate and positive about her convictions today as she did half a lifetime ago. Her latest book, “Dark Age Ahead” (Random House), goes beyond the scope of city planning to examine the foundation upon which North American civilization itself is built. Jacobs identifies five pillars of American society—the nuclear family, higher education, scientists and scientific inquiry, governmental representation and the concept of self-regulation—and argues that each is showing evidence of breaking down, an early sign of a coming Dark Age. But, there is hope, she adds. The damage is not irreparable nor irreversible. She only wants her book to serve as a "wake-up call" to North Americans to reverse the decline so that their civilization will not go the way of the Roman Empire or other mighty civilizations that have fallen in the past. “A culture is unsalvageable if stabilizing forces themselves become ruined and irrelevant,” she writes. “This is what I fear for our own culture, and why I have written this cautionary book, in hopeful expectation that time remains for corrective actions.” NEWSWEEK’s Jennifer Barrett spoke with Jacobs about the continent’s societal problems and her suggested solutions.</p>