The most pressing question facing the small and mid-sized cities of America's industrial heartland is how to reinvent themselves. Once-thriving communities in the Northeastern and Midwestern U. S. have decayed sharply as the high-wage manufacturing jobs that provided the foundation for their prosperity disappeared. A few larger cities had the resources to adjust, but most smaller places that relied on factory work have struggled to do so. Unless and until they find new economic roles for t...

Keel-Tath has survived the rigors of the Desh-Ka temple to become a warrior. But her true challenges have not yet begun.Keel-Tath, the child who would unite her people as foretold by an ancient prophecy, has grown to be a young warrior in the confines of the Desh-Ka temple. She has been sheltered by her old friend and mentor Ayan-Dar from the clutches of Syr-Nagath, the Dark Queen. But when Keel-Tath is forced to choose between sanctuary and her honor, she goes int...

This riveting suspense thriller explores the special bond between a brother and sister when Richard Baimbridge rushes back to his coastal hometown of Wilmington, NC, to assist with his sister's recovery after she's brutally attacked and crippled investigating the rape of a 13-year-old. Coming face to face with his tormented past and a dark family secret, he fights to stay above the flood of childhood trauma and, serving as his sister's legs, is drawn into the dark underside of this quiet c...

The masterfully told story of twelve volatile days in the life of Chicago, when an aviation disaster, a race riot, a crippling transit strike, and a sensational child murder transfixed and roiled a city already on the brink of collapse.When 1919 began, the city of Chicago seemed on the verge of transformation. Modernizers had an audacious, expensive plan to turn the city from a brawling, unglamorous place into "the Metropolis of the World." But just as the dream se...

An unflinching look at the aspiring city-builders of our smart, mobile, connected future.We live in a world defined by urbanization and digital ubiquity, where mobile broadband connections outnumber fixed ones, machines dominate a new "internet of things," and more people live in cities than in the countryside.In Smart Cities, urbanist and technology expert Anthony Townsend takes a broad historical look at the forces that have shaped the planning and design of citi...

This is Madge’s story, one of five stories extracted from THE SWEETHEARTS.Whether in wartime or peace, tales of love, laughter and hardship from the girls in the Rowntrees factory in Yorkshire.“On the morning of her Rowntrees job interview, on a warm Monday morning in July 1932, Fourteen-year-old Madge Fisher stood fidgeting in the hallway of her terraced house while her mother, Margaret, pinned up her hair and then inspected her from top to toe. ‘Hands,’ her mother said, an...

"A remarkable chronicle . . . related with honesty and compassion," this ethnography reveals "the impact of probation and parole practices on one community" ( Publisher Weekly).The War on Drugs has done almost nothing to prevent drugs from being sold or used, but it has created a little-known surveillance state in America's most disadvantaged neighborhoods.Alice Goffman spent six years living in one such neighborhood in Philadelphia, and her observat...

**One of Buzzfeed's 18 Best Nonfiction Books Of 2016**A lyrical, intelligent, authentic, and necessary look at the intersection of race and class in Chicago, a Great American CityIn this intelligent and highly important narrative, Chicago-native Natalie Moore shines a light on contemporary segregation in the city's South Side; with a memoirist's eye, she showcases the lives of these communities through the stories of people ...

A WASHINGTON POST BEST BOOK OF THE YEARBased on an unprecedented eighteen-year study, the center of this riveting book are three engaging streetwise brothers who provide powerful testimony to the exigencies of life lived on the social and economic margins. With profound lessons regarding the intersection of social forces and individual choices, Black succeeds in putting a human face on some of the most important public policy issues of our time.

Honorable Mention, 2014 Eduardo Bonilla-Silva Outstanding Book Award presented by the Society for the Study of Social Problems2012 Best Book Award, Latino/a Sociology Section, presented by the American Sociological Association2012 Finalist, C. Wright Mills Book Award presented by the Study of Social ProblemsA classic ethnography that reveals how urban police criminalize black and Latino boysVictor Rios grew up in the ghetto of Oakland, Calif...

Violent urban schools loom large in our culture: for decades they have served as the centerpieces of political campaigns and as window dressing for brutal television shows and movies. Yet unequal access to quality schools remains the single greatest failing of our society—and one of the most hotly debated issues of our time. Of all the usual words used to describe non-selective city schools—segregated, unequal, violent—none comes close to characterizing their systemic dysfunction in high-p...

An intimate biography of one of the greatest social andreligious reformers of the modern world."Gandhi's work in nonviolence was comprehensive and not simply confined to politics or human rights. It was about building positive relationships based on respect, understanding, acceptance, and appreciation. It was about eliminating exploitation of all kinds and creating harmony."—from the Foreword by Dr. Arun Gandhi, cofounder of the M. K....