Urban City

How did the preaching of a peasant carpenter from Galilee spark a movement that would grow to include over two billion followers? Who listened to this "good news," and who ignored it? Where did Christianity spread, and how? Based on quantitative data and the latest scholarship, preeminent scholar and journalist Rodney Stark presents new and startling information about the rise of the early church, overturning many prevailing views of how Christianity grew through time to become the largest religion in the world.

G'day. I'm still here. Still Pet. Well, I'm only two thirds of a Pet these days, but you might as well call me Pet anyway. Everyone does: everyone but the vampire, that is. Life is more unbalanced these days - cases are cutting closer to home than usual. I thought I was the only one, but there are others like me: kids whose parents were murdered just like mine. Stuff that never fit into place before is beginning fall into place.

This book contains the exact steps that took me from being a city dweller with zero survival skills to becoming a self-sufficient master of both urban and wilderness environments in less than six months. Want to know the biggest difference between those two time periods? A comprehensive understanding of survival techniques adaptable to any situation. The problem is—most people don't know how to effectively prepare for and navigate through crisis situations, whether in bustling cities or remote wilderness. I wrote this book to solve your survival preparedness problem.

When I inherit a haunted bookstore in New Orleans, I go from demon hunter to my dream job. Unfortunately, there’s a dark side to my beautiful new life—the gorgeous demon who seems to think he owns the place. The attraction between us is insane, and we can’t keep our eyes off each other. But I don’t trust him one bit—especially not the way he uses his seductive charms to try to compel me to work for him.

A riveting, groundbreaking account of how the war on crime has torn apart inner-city communities. Forty years in, the tough-on-crime turn in American politics has spurred a prison boom of historic proportions that disproportionately affects Black communities. It has also torn at the lives of those on the outside. As arrest quotas and high-tech surveillance criminalize entire blocks, a climate of fear and suspicion pervades daily life, not only for young men entangled in the legal system but for their family members and working neighbors.

Long accused of racism and “white flight”, the ethnic Americans driven from their homes and neighborhoods—the author included—finally get the chance to tell their side of the story.

The individuals who live within this extraordinary first novel are: Regan and William Hamilton-Sweeney, estranged heirs to one of the city's largest fortunes; Keith and Mercer, the men who, for better or worse, love them; Charlie and Samantha, two suburban teenagers seduced by downtown's punk scene; an obsessive magazine reporter and his idealistic neighbor; and the detective trying to figure out what any of them have to do with a shooting in Central Park.

Found wandering the Witch Woods as a child, everything about Sophia is a mystery. With no memories and no family, she’s raised in secret by the professors of Nighthelm Academy...all of whom know far more about her than they’re letting on. But Sophia does know one thing: she’s a contritum, a magical being with a broken soul. Her very existence is illegal, and until she finds the other piece of her soul, her uncontrollable magic will only grow more deadly and untamed. Then she discovers three men who hold a mysterious sway over not just her soul, but also her heart.

Life is complicated. I mean, life has always been complicated, but there's a difference between monsters-are-trying-to-kill-you complications and monsters-are-in-love-with-you complications. I'm still not sure which is more dangerous. G'day. I'm Pet. Two-thirds of a pet, anyway: The vampire isn't claiming ownership these days, but he's definitely encroaching. On the list of other encroaching complications is the threat of heirling trials, a certain fae lord, and a mysterious librarian - not to mention the thing that's killing people on Hobart's waterfront....

Southern Brooklyn, July 1996. Fire hydrants are open and spraying water on the sizzling blacktop. Punk kids have to make their own fun. Bobby Santovasco and his pal Zeke like to throw rocks at cars getting off the Belt Parkway. They think it's dumb and harmless until it's too late to think otherwise. Then there's Jack Cornacchia, a widower who lives with his high school age daughter Amelia and reads meters for Con Ed but also has a secret life as a vigilante, righting neighbourhood wrongs through acts of violence.

Welcome to Sunder City. The magic is gone, but the monsters remain. I'm Fetch Phillips, just like it says on the window. There are a few things you should know before you hire me: 1. Sobriety costs extra. 2. My services are confidential. 3. I don't work for humans. It's nothing personal - I'm human myself. But after what happened, to the magic, it's not the humans who need my help.

All places are not created equal. In this groundbreaking book, Richard Florida shows that where we live is increasingly a crucial factor in our lives, one that fundamentally affects our professional and personal prospects. As well as explaining why place matters now more than ever, Who's Your City? provides indispensable tools to help you choose the right place for you.

All Daniel Sharabi wanted was a family of his own. Born into a collectivist society of telepaths, he grew up believing that he and his lover Rebecca would form a new breeding cell, helping to raise the next generation of their people. But when Daniel reaches adulthood, he learns that his psychic talents are mediocre at best. He soon finds himself marginalized by the society he dedicated his life to.

It's been a long time since Tobias spread his wings. The exiled dragon prince has worked hard to blend into the human world and practice his love for healing as a pediatric cardiologist. She awakens the dragon within. As a vampire-human hybrid, Sabrina is used to being different from the rest of her community. But all vampires need to feed. The night she chooses Tobias as her next meal, everything changes. He's far more than he seems, and if she doesn't protect his secret, it could cost him his life.

Oklahoma City was born from chaos. It was founded in a bizarre but momentous "Land Run" in 1889, when thousands of people lined up along the borders of Oklahoma Territory and rushed in at noon to stake their claims. Since then, it has been a city torn between the wild energy that drives its outsize ambitions and the forces of order that seek sustainable progress.

Urban universities play an outsized role in America’s cities. They bring diverse ideas and people together and they generate new innovations. But they also gentrify neighborhoods and exacerbate housing inequality in an effort to enrich their campuses and attract students. In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower takes listeners from Hartford to Chicago and from Phoenix to Manhattan, revealing the increasingly parasitic relationship between universities and our cities.

Over the past 10 years, urban planners, technology companies, and governments have promoted smart cities with a somewhat utopian vision of urban life made knowable and manageable through data collection and analysis. Emerging smart cities have become both crucibles and showrooms for the practical application of the Internet of Things, cloud computing, and the integration of big data into everyday life. Are smart cities optimized, sustainable, digitally networked solutions to urban problems? Or are they neoliberal, corporate-controlled, undemocratic non-places?

Rhea's neighborhood is fading away—the mom-and-pop shops of her childhood forced out to make space for an artisanal kombucha brewery here, a hot yoga studio there. And everywhere, the feeling that this place is no longer meant for her. Because while their little corner of South L.A. isn't perfect, to Rhea and her two best friends, it's something even more important—it's home. And it's worth protecting. But as more white people flock to their latest edgy, urban paradise, more of Rhea's friends and family are pushed out. Until Rhea decides it's time to push back.

The staff at Salem, Massachusetts's local station, WICH-TV, is looking forward to the wedding of their program director, Lee Barrett. But when Lee heads off on her Maine honeymoon, she'll be haunted by the ghosts of her own past. Lee and Detective Sergeant Pete Mondello are finally tying the knot - and Lee is tying up loose ends before the big day. After the celebration, complete with a cake made by the station magician, there should be time to relax—but the Maine island happens to be near the site of the crash that killed Lee's parents, a mystery she's never been able to solve.

Segregation by Design draws on more than 100 years of quantitative and qualitative data from thousands of American cities to explore how local governments generate race and class segregation. Starting in the early 20th century, cities have used their power of land use control to determine the location and availability of housing, amenities (such as parks), and negative land uses (such as garbage dumps). The result has been segregation - first within cities and more recently between them.