Urban Politics

New York Times best-selling investigative journalist Ron Suskind based this book on his Pulitzer Prize winning articles about Cedric Jennings, a Black youth struggling to survive one of D.C.'s toughest school districts. A moving portrait of inner city life, A Hope in the Unseen offers a view of life through the eyes of someone trying desperately to make his way up from the bottom.

Once America’s capitalist dream town, Detroit is our country’s greatest urban failure, having fallen the longest and the farthest. But the city’s worst crisis yet (and that’s saying something) has managed to do the unthinkable: turn the end of days into a laboratory for the future. Urban planners, land speculators, neopastoral agriculturalists, and utopian environmentalists―all have been drawn to Detroit’s baroquely decaying frontier. With an eye for both the darkly absurd and the radically new Detroit-area native Mark Binelli has chronicled this convergence.

Reeling from the attempts on his life and the lives of his family, Police Inspector Robert Finlay returns to work. His first job - to investigate the Eastern European sex-slave industry, just as a key witness is murdered. Finlay, along with his new partner, Nina Brasov, finds himself facing a ruthless criminal gang determined to keep control at all costs. Finlay's efforts to protect his wife and child may have been in vain, though, as an MI5 protection officer uncovers a covert secret service operation that threatens them all....

Sinclair McKay's portrait of Berlin from 1919 forward explores the city's broad human history, from the end of the Great War to the Blockade, rise of the Wall, and beyond. Sinclair McKay's Berlin begins by taking listeners back to 1919, when the city emerged from the shadows of the Great War to become an extraordinary by-word for modernity—in art, cinema, architecture, industry, science, and politics. He traces the city’s history through the rise of Hitler and the Battle for Berlin, which ended in the final conquest of the city in 1945.

Multiple times a day, in cities across the US and beyond, a simple yet powerful message is repeated by the well-meaning, the ignorant, and the bigoted: “don’t go”—avoid at all costs those Black and Brown disinvested neighborhoods that have become bywords for social disorder and urban decay. This book is a collection of intimate stories that uncover the hidden influence of both subtle and overt “don’t go” messages and the segregation they perpetuate in Chicago.

Jamison Hart, former SIS operative turned freelance bad guy, has his own reasons for going after Aisling. And now he has the resources of a new organization to bring to bear. But our favorite witch is far from unequipped. With her family at her side, Aisling seeks a second wand to multiply her magical power. Shimmer continues to display increased intelligence and demands endless upgrades. Add in Victoria Watson and Mia Pederson who support the Secret Agent on a daily basis.

Americans are loud. Amsterdam equals sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Mexicans are lazy and Germans are boring, but punctual. Paris is romantic, Wuhan infectious, Ukrainians heroic, and New Zealand untouched.

Żadne inne duże polskie miasto nie ma tylu tajemniczych i niezwykłych historii co Szczecin. Dlaczego? Bo nigdzie indziej losy nie potoczyły się w tak skomplikowany sposób. W ciągu wieków miastem władali na przemian Niemcy, Polacy, Francuzi i Szwedzi. W czasie II wojny światowej największe zniszczenia spowodowali w nim nie Rosjanie, lecz... Anglicy. Wiele razy w oficjalnej historii Szczecina próbowano przemilczać niewygodne fakty lub wymyślać nieprawdziwe propagandowe hasła. Tymczasem na przełomie XIX i XX wieku było to jedno z najważniejszych miast Europy.

Słynie jako miasto mostów. Zachwyca architekturą. Uwodzi i obiecuje moc ekscytujących wrażeń. Wrocław od lat niczym niepokojąco piękna kobieta urzeka i skrywa sekrety... Tamara Barriga z pasją i odwagą wnika w nieodkryte dotąd tajemnice Wrocławia. Zdradza, dlaczego w Mrówkowcu mieszka się luksusowo i… nieznośnie. Opowiada o ludziach, którzy wyróżniali się mądrością, pracowitością, a w końcu zapisali się w historii miasta i nie tylko: profesor Alzheimer, Otfrid Foerster – lekarz Lenina, Sir Gutmann – ojciec igrzysk paraolimpijskich czy profesor Tołpa – wierzący w leczniczą moc torfu.

In The Habit of Turning the World Upside Down, Howard Mansfield returns with thoughtful linked narratives examining a crucial and overlooked element of American identity: property.

On a clear Saturday night in downtown Philadelphia, a spectacular mafia assassination is captured by a TV news chopper, and the footage becomes a worldwide viral sensation. This lurid publicity stunt is the work of Julian Breton, a professional "culture-hacker" who honed his dark arts running psychological warfare operations for the US military. But Breton appears to have killed the wrong man in a case of mistaken identity.

All of Mumbai's possessions and memories come to die at the Deonar garbage mountains. Towering at the outskirts of the city, the mountains are covered in a faint smog from trash fires. Over time, as wealth brought Bollywood knock offs, fast food, and plastics to Mumbaikars, a small, forgotten community of migrants and rag-pickers came to live at the mountains' edge, making a living by reusing, recycling, and reselling.

Bicycle/Race paints an unforgettable picture of Los Angeles—and the United States—from the perspective of two wheels. This is a book of borderlands and intersections, a cautionary tale about the dangers of putting infrastructure before culture, and a coming-of-age story about power and identity.

Warum positives Denken uns nicht weiterbringt, Schimpfen aber schon. Dieses Hörbuch ist ein Aufruf zum Widerstand gegen die Ideologie unserer Zeit: den Zwang des Glücks. Ratgeber und Duschbäder fordern uns auf, positiv zu sein. Wir sollen Scheitern als Chance begreifen und ständig unser Selbst entfalten. Doch der Terror des Positiven nervt, belastet uns alle und schwächt den Zusammenhalt: Wir betrachten Glück als Prestige und verstehen politische Probleme als persönliches Versagen. Das zeigt nicht nur die psychologische Forschung, sondern auch die Geschichte.

"Ihr seid jung, euch gehört die Welt" - ein Satz, den die 24-jährige Ronja Ebeling schon oft gehört hat. Der Traumjob in den Zwanzigern, Eigenheim und Familie mit dreißig, dazwischen jede Menge Strandurlaube und Chancen zur persönlichen Entfaltung, und dann, im Alter, irgendwo im Grünen entspannt den Lebensabend verbringen. Doch die Realität? Die sieht leider anders aus. Anstatt sich auf unbefristeten Jobverträgen auszuruhen, pendelt die junge Generation von Praktikum zu Praktikum, statt Urlaub gibt es Burn-out, statt einer satten Rente den Ausblick auf Altersarmut. Und Kinder? Die kann sich heute doch eh keiner mehr leisten!

With a new afterword covering the two decades since its first publication, two of Washington, D.C.'s most respected journalists expose one of America's most tragic ironies: How the nation's capital, often a gleaming symbol of peace and hope, is the setting for vicious contradictions and devastating conflicts over race, class, and power. Jaffe and Sherwood have chillingly chronicled the descent of the District of Columbia.

America is obsessed with Los Angeles. And America has been thinking about Los Angeles all wrong, for decades, on repeat. Los Angeles is not just the place where the American dream hits the Pacific. (It has its own dreams.) Not just the vanishing point of America's western drive. (It has its own compass.) Functionally, aesthetically, mythologically, even technologically, an independent territory, defined less by distinct borders than by an aura of autonomy and a sense of unfurling destiny - this is the city-state of Los Angeles.

Black Picket Fences is a stark, moving, and candid look at a section of America that is too often ignored by both scholars and the media: the Black middle class. The result of living for three years in "Groveland", a Black middle-class neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, sociologist Mary Pattillo-McCoy has written a book that explores both the advantages and the boundaries that exist for members of the Black middle class.

In Making the Second Ghetto, Arnold Hirsch argues that in the post-depression years Chicago was a "pioneer in developing concepts and devices" for housing segregation. Hirsch shows that the legal framework for the national urban renewal effort was forged in the heat generated by the racial struggles waged on Chicago's South Side.

Modello is an inspirational true story from beginning to end of how Dr. Roger Mills and staff accomplished the "miracle" in the Modello and Homestead Gardens Housing Projects, applying the Three Principles/Health Realization approach based on an innovative spiritual psychology. Through extensive interviews with residents as well as Dr. Mills, his staff, and other professionals, a compelling and moving portrait is painted.