Town Politics

Raymond Unwin was a prominent architect and engineer from the late 19th and early 20th century. He helped popularize the Arts and Crafts movement and was one of the first English voices in the town planning movement. Town Planning in Practice was published in 1909 and still resonates with planners and urban designers today. It reflects on discussions that are still happening to this day including the design of buildings, plots of land, and neighborhood streets.

Revisiting the unforgettable world he created in The Trouble Up North, Travis Mulhauser introduces Delos Harris, who has discovered he's a descendant of the Sawbrook clan, and a battle for rights to the ancestral land ensues in this atmospheric novel about a family whose troubled history is ever...

Something's happening in the small town of Bradbury. Something more sinister than the disappearance of the woman the Excoms have been sent to find. Something only they can stop. Ananke, Rosario, Dylan, Liesel, and Ricky have reassembled to undertake their second mission. Seems easy enough: locate the missing woman and be on their way. But not even the mysterious Administrator who called them together could have predicted what the team would encounter.

Over the past several years, Hardwick, Vermont, a typical hardscrabble farming community of three thousand residents, has jump-started its economy and redefined its self-image through a local, self-sustaining food system unlike anything else in America.

Even before Jack the Ripper haunted its streets for prey, London's East End had earned a reputation for immorality, filth, and vice. John Bennett, a writer and tour guide who has walked and researched the area for more than 30 years, delves into four centuries of history to chronicle the crimes, their perpetrators, and the circumstances that made the East End an ideal breeding ground for illegal activity.

In The Company Town, Hardy Green, who has covered American business for over a decade, offers a compelling analysis of the emergence of these communities and their role in shaping the American economy, beginning in the country's earliest years....

Don’t Take Your Love to Town is a story of courage in the face of poverty and tragedy. Ruby recounts losing her mother when she was six, growing up in a mission in northern New South Wales and leaving home when she was 15. She lived in tin huts and tents in the bush and picked up work on the land while raising nine children virtually single-handedly. Later she struggled to make ends meet in the Koori areas of Sydney.

Historic quarters in cities and towns across the middle of Europe were devastated during the Second World War—some, like those of Warsaw and Frankfurt, had to be rebuilt almost completely. They are now centers of peace and civility that attract millions of tourists, but the stories they tell about places, peoples, and nations are selective. They are never the whole story. Exploring seven old towns, from Frankfurt and Prague to Vilnius in Lithuania, Marek Kohn examines how they have been used since the Second World War to conceal political tensions and reinforce certain versions of history.

For many Americans who grew up in a small town, childhood and adolescence revolved around the skatepark. As time passes, however, these people drift away from skateboarding and the spaces where they learned to do it. Part memoir, part travelogue, part essay, Small Town Skateparks is the story of an adventure to discover the role skateparks play in such lives and the role they played in the author’s own.

"There are children in Holbeck without crayons. Living in a city with an opera company. An opera company paid for with money from all of us. Until everyone has crayons, no one gets opera. That’s what I believe." A deeply moving memoir of how a group of artists fed their local community during the COVID pandemic. When crisis hits and audiences stay home, what’s the most useful thing a theater company can do? The answer was to become a food bank and one-stop help shop for those in need. In 15 months, Slung Low would go on to deliver over 15,000 food parcels.

This is the first thorough historical account of Chief Seattle and his times - the story of a half century of tremendous flux, turmoil, and violence, during which a native American war leader became an advocate for peace and strove to create a successful hybrid racial community.

Costretto all'esilio dal duca di Lu, Confucio disse: "Se la mia strada finisce, salirò su una zattera e mi lascerò portare verso il mare". E così Kongzi, settantaseiesimo discendente diretto del grande filosofo, fugge con la moglie incinta e la figlia quando la Squadra della pianificazione familiare entra nel villaggio per sterilizzare con la forza tutte le donne fertili e interrompere le gravidanze di quelle che hanno già un figlio.

When the New Deal Came to Town is a snapshot of a time and place: Whiteland, Indiana during the Great Depression, one of the most fraught eras in American history. Imagine yourself transported back in time to April of 1933 and deposited in a small American town, when a young boy named George Melloan moved with his family to this quiet hamlet during the middle of the worst economic period in American history.

Over 40 years, two British police units acted undercover to infiltrate activist groups. At least 20 of those officers deliberately targeted women and entered relationships with them. One of those women was me. This is my story.

Staying Sane in Crazy Town interweaves memoir, cultural commentary, philosophy. and science in a bid to uncover the lies people tell themselves about the things they most fear - lies that come at a terrible cost. The tale is inspirational without offering up the bromides of typical self-help and inspirational texts. It is philosophical, but funny and in-your-face.

A look at how commercialization has transformed youth sports from fun into a heavily commercialized and profitable venture. Examining the youth sports economy from many sides - the major corporations, the small entrepreneurs, the coaches, the parents, and, of course, the kids - Hyman probes the reasons for rapid changes in what gets bought and sold in this lucrative marketplace. He reveals the effects on kids and profiles the individuals and communities bucking this destructive trend of commercialization.

In April 1938, Swift River Valley residents held a farewell ball to mark the demise of the quintessential New England town of Enfield and its three smaller neighbors, Greenwich, Dana, and Prescott. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts sacrificed these three towns to build the Quabbin, a massive reservoir of drinking water for residents of Boston. Three prominent residents attended the somber occasion.

Six-year-old Olivia Hathaway tiptoes down the center aisle of Maybelle's Market, stopping once to glance over her shoulder and make sure her mother isn't watching. But Mrs. Hathaway is too preoccupied to notice her daughter has slipped away. Minutes later, a frantic Mrs. Hathaway runs up and down the aisles, desperately searching for her missing daughter. But Olivia is already gone. Will PI Sloane Monroe find her before it's too late?

Summer, 1851. Racial tensions in America were higher than ever. The year before, President Millard Fillmore had passed the Fugitive Slave Act to return runaway slaves to the South. In February, Congress had established the reservation system, forcing Native Americans to leave their homelands. White Americans were strengthening dominance over people of color across the continent. In Oregon City, one biracial man named Jacob Vanderpool found himself in the crosshairs of this racist discrimination.

In 2013, Ayaz Virji left a comfortable job at an East Coast hospital and moved to a town of 1,400 in Minnesota, feeling called to address the shortage of doctors in rural America. But in 2016, this decision was tested when the reliably blue, working-class county swung for Donald Trump. Virji watched in horror as his children faced anti-Muslim remarks at school and some of his most loyal patients began questioning whether he belonged in the community. Virji wanted out. But in 2017, a local pastor invited him to speak at her church....