Shortly after his miraculous birth, made possible with help from the phoenix, Prince Ru-lan is captured by Su-ling, the evil enchantress, who plans to raise Ru-lan and use him to take over the kingdom. Several years later, the phoenix reminds the little boy of his real identity and he escapes from Su-ling's cottage with the help of his animal friends. Once their son is firmly ensconced in the palace, the emperor and empress undertake a daring plot to forever rid the kingdom of the threat o...

Our traditional image of Chicago—as a gritty metropolis carved into ethnically defined enclaves where the game of machine politics overshadows its ends—is such a powerful shaper of the city's identity that many of its closest observers fail to notice that a new Chicago has emerged over the past two decades. Larry Bennett here tackles some of our more commonly held ideas about the Windy City—inherited from such icons as Theodore Dreiser, Carl Sandburg, Daniel Burnham, Robert Park, Sara Pare...

How remunicipalization can be implemented to restructure urban governance.Across North America, Europe, and the Global South, public services such as water and energy that were once privatized have returned to public sector functions—an intriguing new development known as remunicipalization. Unwinding Privatization, edited by Alba Alexander, Larry Bennett, Evan McKenzie, and Michael Pagano, explores the sources, scale, and implications of transferring owne...

Why do we seek to return to the past or rescue pieces of the past that may have value in the present? Why does nostalgia attach to an approach to the world, social rules, and material products that willfully rejected the past?Larry Bennett explores the complexities of nostalgia with considerations of the historic preservation of brutalist architecture, specifically Bertrand Goldberg’s Prentice Women’s Hospital in Chicago; the memoirs and recollections of early and mid-twentieth-cen...

What will work eventually look like? This is the question at the heart of this timely collection. The editors and contributors—a mix of policy experts, academics, and advocates—seek to reframe the typical projections of the “future” of work. They examine the impact of structural racism on work, the loss of family‑sustaining jobs, the new role of gig work, growing economic inequality, barriers to rewarding employment such as age, gender, disability, and immigration status, and the business ...

First Published in 1997. This book is the outcome of a small project that grew and grew. In the fall of 1990 the Chicago-based Policy Research Action Group (PRAG) commissioned the author to do a study of the Uptown area, to which he had moved in 1988.lMeanwhile, in conjunction with his university's Foreign Study Program, he spent the fall of 1991 in Sheffield, England.

This groundbreaking book shows how major shifts in federal policy are spurring local public housing authorities to demolish their high-rise, low-income developments, and replace them with affordable low-rise, mixed income communities. It focuses on Chicago, and that city's affordable housing crisis, but it provides analytical frameworks that can be applied to developments in every American city. "Where Are Poor People to Live?" provides valuable new empirical information on public housing,...

For years, America has been plagued by slow economic growth and increasing inequality. In The Captured Economy, Brink Lindsey and Steven M. Teles identify a common factor behind these twin ills: breakdowns in democratic governance that allow wealthy special interests to capture the policymaking process for their own benefit. They document the proliferation of regressive regulations that redistribute wealth and income up the economic scale while stifling entrepreneurship and innova...

National bestsellerPaul Martin was the Prime Minister we never really knew — in this memoir he emerges as a fascinating flesh and blood man, still working hard to make a better world.“The next thing you know, I was in a jail cell.” (Chapter 2)“From the moment I flipped his truck on the road home to Morinville…” (Chapter 3)“When I came back into Aquin’s headquarters I had a broken nose.” (Chapter 4)These are not lines that you expect ...

An acclaimed cultural historian takes readers on an intellectual thrill ride through the kaleidoscopic story of futurology, a surprisingly powerful force in the modern world.For millennia, predicting the future was the province of priests and prophets, the realm of astrologers and seers. Then, in the twentieth century, futurologists emerged, claiming that data and design could make planning into a rational certainty. Over time, many of these technologists and trend...

Capitalism has been an unprecedented engine of wealth creation for many centuries, leading to sustained productivity gains and long-term growth and lifting an increasing proportion of humanity out of poverty. But its effects, and hence its future, have come increasingly under question: Is capitalism still improving wealth and well-being for the many? Or, is long-term value creation being sacrificed to the pressures of short-termism, with potentially far-reaching consequences for society, t...

An engaging introduction for very young children to the basic facts of life in a way that is gentle, age-appropriate and accessible.Research shows that children are learning about sex at an increasingly young age and often from undesirable sources. The Q&A format, with questions posed in the child’s voice and answers starting simply and becoming gradually more in-depth, allows the adult to guide the conversation to a natural and satisfying conclusion. Additional qu...