Jane Jacobs was born on May 4, 1916, in Scranton, Pennsylvania. After working as a reporter and a freelance writer, she joined the editorial staff of Architectural Forum in 1952. Her first work on the urban environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, was published in 1961. She published her last book, Dark Age Ahead, in 2004. She died on April 25, 2006, in Toronto, Canada.