Urban City

On a rainy night in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen, a woman throws a doll from the fifth-floor window of a gutted tenement, then leaps herself. From his own apartment a few blocks away, freelance photographer David Corman listens to the radio reports as they come over his headset. Corman is a man at the edge, threatened with eviction, besieged by his wife’s attempt to regain custody of their daughter, yet reluctant to give up the life that permits him to roam the night. In the woman’s dying fall, he sees the chance to sell a story....

For the first time in the history of our planet, more than half the population - 3.3 billion people - is now living in cities. City is the ultimate guidebook to our urban centers - the signature unit of human civilization. With erudite prose, this unique work of metatourism explores what cities are and how they work. It covers history, customs and language, districts, transport, money, work, shops and markets, and tourist sites, creating a fantastically detailed portrait of the city through history and into the future.

In their new audiobook, The New Localism, urban experts Bruce Katz and Jeremy Nowak reveal where the real power to create change lies and how it can be used to address our most serious social, economic, and environmental challenges.

In the year 2008, a Malamute arrives in New York City, followed by a pack of German Shepherds, Dobermans, and Great Danes, all dressed in grand old Prussian style. They become the toast of Manhattan - Monster Dogs. But who, or what, are they really? Outfitted with voice boxes and prosthetic arms, the dogs are the result of an experiment begun years ago in a tiny Canadian village. But their creators did not anticipate that these decadent dogs would be threatened by a strange, incurable illness.

In this remarkable challenge to conventional thinking about the environment, David Owen argues that the greenest community in the United States is not Portland, Oregon, or Snowmass, Colorado, but New York City.

The first European settlers saw America as a paradise regained. The continent seemed to offer a God-given opportunity to start again and build the perfect community. Those messianic days are gone. But as Alex Krieger argues in City on a Hill, any attempt at deep understanding of how the country has developed must recognize the persistent and dramatic consequences of utopian dreaming. Even as ideals have changed, idealism itself has for better and worse shaped our world of bricks and mortar, macadam, parks, and farmland.

Baltimore is the setting for (and typifies) one of the most penetrating examinations of bigotry and residential segregation ever published in the United States. Antero Pietila shows how continued discrimination practices toward African Americans and Jews have shaped the cities in which we now live. Eugenics, racial thinking, and white supremacist attitudes influenced even the federal government's actions toward housing in the 20th century, dooming American cities to ghettoization.

En Manhattan, un joven estudiante de posgrado sale del tren y se da cuenta de que no recuerda quién es, de dónde viene ni su nombre. Pero sí que es capaz de sentir el latir del corazón de la ciudad, ver su historia y percibir su poder. En el Bronx, la directora lenape de una galería de arte encuentra unos extraños grafitis que adornan toda la ciudad, tan maravillosos y poderosos que se podría decir que la pintura la llama, literalmente. En Brooklyn, una madre y política descubre que oye las canciones de la ciudad, que resuenan al ritmo de los tacones de sus Louboutin.

Simmie Johnson was born the son of a slave. He was also a genius. After earning a PhD in physics from Tuskegee Institute, he wrote a paper outlining a theory for time travel, including plans for a time machine - called a chronocar - which was published in a scientific journal in the early 1900s. Since the technology required to build the chronocar did not yet exist, the paper and its brilliant writer faded into obscurity.

After a failed attempt to end her life, Alia Carter leaves her childhood home to become a waitress in the state's most prominent hotel. Traumatized after her mother’s death, she silently grapples with her pain until she saves the life of a mysterious man who reveals to her a world of true magic, and terrifying wonder.

In this erudite and enjoyable Los Angeles Times best seller, Joel Kotkin explores the history of cities around the globe. He argues that urban areas must be places where there is a shared feeling of sacredness, civic identity, and moral order. These exciting concentrations of ideas and energy have long been and should continue to be meaningful in our daily lives.

The remarkable lengths Ruderman and Laker go to for the story - chasing down witnesses on the city's grimmest streets, sifting through archive boxes and hours of surveillance tape for crucial clues, and coaxing reluctant victims to come forward - put their determination to balance motherhood with the career they love to the ultimate test.

Strap in for a thrilling adventure in the sequel to Davinia Evans's wickedly entertaining debut fantasy that follows our favorite irreverent alchemists, high society ladies, and swashbuckling street gangs as they wrestle with the nature of reality itself.

Still coming to terms with their unexpected partnership, Augustine and Harlow have a tentative truce. Although with Harlow slowly working to accept being fae, Augustine still learning how to be Guardian, and feelings growing on both sides, they do not have an easy road ahead. But when a young girl is stolen from the Mardi Gras Exemplar Ball - the biggest fae event of the year - Harlow and Augustine must put all their issues aside to bring her home alive.

Saint City has always been Dante Valentine's home. It's where she grew up, it's where her dead are buried, and it's where she learned to hunt. Now, one call from an old friend will bring her back to investigate a murder too close to home for anyone's comfort. But the one person she trusted has just betrayed her.

Once upon a time, a burnt-out Claire Dunn spent a year living off the grid in a wilderness survival program. Yet love and the possibilities of human connection drew her back to the city, where she soon found herself as overscheduled, addicted to her phone and lost in IKEA as everyone else. Given all the city offered - comfort, convenience, community and opportunity - she wanted to stay. But to do so, she'd have to learn how to rewild her own urban soul. Now, Claire swims in city rivers, forages in the suburbs and explores many other practices to connect to the world around her.

American cities are distinct from almost all others in the degree to which freeways and freeway travel dominate urban landscapes. In The Drive for Dollars, Brian D. Taylor, Eric A. Morris, and Jeffrey R. Brown tell the largely misunderstood story of how freeways became the centerpiece of US urban transportation systems, and the crucial, though usually overlooked, role of fiscal politics in bringing freeways about.

Even in the confines of a city apartment, you now have the possibility to effectively manage your space and grow all kinds of tasty and flavorful crops. This is indeed your chance to regain control of the quality of the produce you eat - you are the one managing what goes on in your plants and inside your soil. Discover how to transform your apartment into a self-sufficient garden.

On March 11, 2003, in Brownsville, Texas - one of America's poorest cities - John Allen Rubio and Angela Camacho murdered their three young children. The apartment building in which the brutal crimes took place was already run down, and in their aftermath a consensus developed in the community that it should be destroyed. It was a place, neighbors felt, that was plagued by spiritual cancer.

Author, social critic, and “New York City’s career elegist” (New York Times), Jeremiah Moss felt alienated in a town that had become suburbanized and sanitized. Then lockdown launched an unprecedented urban experiment: What happens when an entire social class abandons the city? Out in streets made vibrant by New Yorkers left behind, Moss found a sense of freedom he never thought possible.