2015 Speaker's Book Award — ShortlistedCity planning in the GTHA has been mired in political grandstanding for the past decade, The New Urban Agenda offers a plain language solution to the issues plaguing the GTHA.Politics in the Greater Toronto, Hamilton Area (GTHA) have become increasingly divisive over the past decade, and solutions to the city’s problems have become hot-topic issues debated in council and the press, but never finding r...

The Hill Times: Best Books of 2017What are the limits of Canadian democracy and how are they being expanded by a revolution in participatory democracy?The Brexit vote in Britain and the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States illustrate that our system of representative democracy is in deep trouble.There are signs of political alienation everywhere. Most believe that government is run by a few big interests. Wealthy corpo...

Deep Denial, part popular history and part personal memoir, documents the 400-year racialization of the United States and how people of European descent came to be called white. Author David Billings focuses primarily on the deeply embedded notion of white supremacy, and tells us why, despite the Civil Rights Movement and an African-American president, we remain, in the words of the author, a nation hard-wired by race. A master storyteller, Billings starts each chapter with a disarming and...

Gina Perini manages a bookstore in one of San Francisco's most lively neighborhoods. Although she thrives in her world of books, her harrowing escape from the war in the Balkans years earlier remains fresh in her mind. There are still those who are searching for her and who are intent on vengeance. Gina suddenly gets news that someone from her past is still alive—someone she had given up hope of finding. This sets in motion a chain of events that will stretch across the country and push he...

The evening of May 10, 1970, found a young Watt M. Casey Jr. standing awestruck, only a few feet from Jimi Hendrix as the legendary guitarist tore into his unique arrangement of “The Star-Spangled Banner” on the stage of San Antonio’s Hemisphere Arena during the Texas leg of his Cry of Love Tour. Bemoaning the fact that he had no camera to document the amazing experience or the visionary musicians creating it, Watt promised himself that he would make up for his oversight in the weeks and y...

Jeff Speck has dedicated his career to determining what makes cities thrive. And he has boiled it down to one key factor: walkability.The very idea of a modern metropolis evokes visions of bustling sidewalks, vital mass transit, and a vibrant, pedestrian-friendly urban core. But in the typical American city, the car is still king, and downtown is a place that's easy to drive to but often not worth arriving at.Making walkability happen is relatively easy and cheap; seeing exac...

The New York Times–bestselling roadmap to resistance in the Trump era from the internationally acclaimed activist and author of On Fire and The Battle for Paradise.The election of Donald Trump is a dangerous escalation in a world of cascading crises. Trump's vision—a radical deregulation of the US economy in the interest of corporations, an all-out war on "radical Islamic terrorism," and a sweeping aside of climate science to unleash a do...

The rivalry of Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses, a struggle for the soul of a city, is one of the most dramatic and consequential in modern American history. To a young Jane Jacobs, Greenwich Village, with its winding cobblestone streets and diverse makeup, was everything a city neighborhood should be. But consummate power broker Robert Moses, the father of many of New York’s most monumental development projects, thought neighborhoods like Greenwich Village were badly in need of “urban renewal...

Following widespread news that Toronto Police are in possession of the alleged Rob Ford crack cocaine video, there has never been a better time to read the essential backgrounder to Rob Ford's increasingly wild and erratic mayoralty.When people talk about recalling politicians, it's usually because the politician delivered something other than what they advertised, and the voters voted for--lies, frauds and infidelities. Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, however, is exactly what the voters e...

A "straight-dope, tell-all account" of touring with two of the world's greatest bands of the 60s and 70s—A "fast-moving narrative of rock-n-roll excess" ( Publishers Weekly).In this all-access memoir of the psychedelic era, Sam Cutler recounts his life as tour manager for the Rolling Stones and the Grateful Dead—whom he calls the yin and yang of bands. After working with the Rolling Stones at their historic Hyde Park concert in 1969, Sam managed their Amer...

**Dear Reader,In February 2013 I gave a speech at the National Prayer Breakfast. Standing a few feet from President Obama, I warned my fellow citizens of the dangers facing our country and called for a return to the principles that made America great.**Many Americans heard and responded, but our nation’s decline has continued. Today the danger is greater than ever before, and I have never shared a more urgent message than I do now.Our growing debt and deteriorating ...

Once upon a time I was falling apart. Now I'm always falling in love.Pick up the microphone.When Rob Sheffield moved to New York City in the summer of 2001, he was a young widower trying to start a new life in a new town. Behind, in the past, was his life as a happily married rock critic, with a wife he adored, and a massive collection of mix tapes that captured their life together. And then, in a flash, all he had left were the tapes.Beyoncé , Bowie, Bon Jovi, Bena...