In City Life, Witold Rybczynski looks at what we want from cities, how they have evolved, and what accounts for their unique identities. In this vivid... description of everything from the early colonial settlements to the advent of the skyscraper to the changes wrought by the automobile, the telephone, the airplane, and telecommuting, Rybczynski reveals how our urban spaces have been shaped by the landscapes and lifestyles of the New World.

Incorporating a new expanded introduction. The continuing relevance of Ron Dore's classic study of Japanese urban life and social structures is widely... accepted by urban sociologists and other social scientists concerned with the study of modern Japan.

"This comprehensive selection from the influential City Lights Pocket Poets Series is a landmark retrospective, celebrating forty years of publishing... and cultural history.From the introduction by Lawrence Ferlinghetti: “Even though some say that an avant-garde in literature no longer exists, the smaller independent publisher is itself still a true avant-garde, its place still out there, scouting the unknown . . . From the beginning, the aim was to publish across the board, avoiding the provincial and the academic . . . I had in mind rather an international, dissident, insurgent ferment . . .”Includes poetry by: Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Kenneth Rexroth, Kenneth Patchen, Allen Ginsberg, Marie Ponsot, Denise Levertov, Gregory Corso, Jacques Prévert, Robert Duncan, Jerome Rothenberg, Nicanor Parra, Robert Nichols, Anselm Hollo, Malcolm Lowry, Frank O’Hara, Philip Lamantia, Bob Kaufman, Janine Pommy-Vega, Charles Upton, Pablo Picasso, Robert Bly, Diane di Prima, Jack Kerouac, Andrei Voznesensky, Pete Winslow, Harold Norse, Anne Waldman, Jack Hirschman, Stefan Brect, Peter Orlovsky, Antler, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Ernesto Cardenal, Antonio Porta, Adam Cornford, La Loca, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Daisy Zamora, Rosario Murillo, and Alberto Blanco.

Now in its third edition, City Lights: Urban-Suburban Life in the Global Society is the most interdisciplinary urban studies book on the market. It... skillfully blends social science perspectives with insights from the visual arts and humanities to provide a comprehensive introduction to cities, suburbs, and post-suburban areas and how they work. Motivating students to develop their own perspectives on the issues, author E. Barbara Phillips provides an extended discussion of "doing social science," systematically showing how scholarly controversy and public debates over urban-suburban policy are rooted in deep-seated differences: in ideologies, research methods, theoretical orientations, academic disciplines, and/or levels of analysis. Featuring a unique combination of serious scholarship and an accessible, engaging writing style, City Lights, Third Edition, is ideal for courses in urban sociology, urban studies, urban growth and development, urban theory, and urban history. It incorporates many helpful pedagogical features, including almost 200 photographs and illustrations, real-life case studies, excerpts from classic works, key terms, and suggestions for further learning. In addition, end-of-chapter projects encourage students to apply what they have learned by participating in research, activism, or other civic pursuits in their own communities. Thoroughly revised and updated, the third edition features* A focus on the U.S. city but also a global emphasis throughout, with in-depth profiles of such cities as Kyoto, Cordóba, Shanghai, Mumbai, and Mexico City; numerous global-local links; and a new chapter (5) on global urbanization and the urban system * Updated statistical data * Detailed coverage of the Internet's influence on personal, political, and economic relations* Discussions of numerous new topics including the impact of terrorism on cities, new immigrants in the U.S. and elsewhere, gated communities, building "green," and the "New Urbanism" in the U.S* Analyses of recent political, social, and economic changes--including economic downturns--and their effects on urbanites and suburbanites in the U.S. and worldwide

Winner of the 1981 Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award for the best book published in the United States on government, politics, or international... affairs."City Limits radically reinterprets urban politics by deriving its dominant forces from the logic of the American federal structure. It is thereby able to explain some pervasive tendencies of urban political outcomes that are puzzling or scarcely noticed at all when cities are viewed as autonomous units, outside the federal framework. Professor Peterson's analysis is imaginativelyfor conceived and skillfully carried through. His beautifully finished volume will lastingly alter our understanding of urban affairs in America."—from the citation by the selection committee for the Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award

In a study that challenges familiar Western modes of thought, Jacob K. Olupona focuses on one of the most important religious centers in Africa and in... the world: the Yorùbá city of Ilé-Ifè in southwest Nigeria. The spread of Yorùbá traditions in the African diaspora has come to define the cultural identity of millions of black and white people in Brazil, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Trinidad, and the United States. Seen through the eyes of a native, this first comprehensive study of the spiritual and cultural center of the Yorùbá religion tells how the city went from great prominence to near obliteration and then rose again as a contemporary city of gods. Throughout, Olupona corroborates the indispensable linkages between religion, cosmology, migration, and kinship as espoused in the power of royal lineages, hegemonic state structure, gender, and the Yorùbá sense of place, offering the fullest portrait to date of this sacred African city.

This compact yet comprehensive account of Chicago's history links key events in the city's development, from its marshy origins in the 1600s to today's... robust metropolis. Synthesizing a vast body of literature, Spinney presents Chicago in terms of the people whose lives made the city—not only the tycoons and the politicians but also the hundreds of thousands of immigrants from all over the world who have kept the city working.City of Big Shoulders sweeps across the colorful and dramatic panorama of Chicago's explosive past. How did the pungent swamplands that the Native Americans called the wild-garlic place mushroom into one of the world's largest and most sophisticated cities? What is the real story behind the Great Chicago Fire? What aspects of American industry exploded with the bomb in Haymarket Square? Did the 1920s in Chicago roar as loudly as Hollywood would have us believe?A city of immigrants and entrepreneurs, Chicago is quintessentially American. Spinney traces formative events in the city's history, bringing to life the people, events, and institutions that are most important for understanding Chicago's story. From Fort Dearborn to Cabrini-Green, Père Marquette to Mayor Daley, the Union Stockyards to the Chicago Bulls, City of Big Shoulders draws together diverse threads of the city's development, shedding light on underlying social and economic causes of major events and, especially, on the roles of ordinary people.Engaging and highly informative, this account will interest students and teachers of urban history, as well as anyone looking for a brisk overview of Chicago's history. Historic photographs and informative tables illuminate the narrative.

What could be more "liberal" than believing in society's responsibility for crime--that crime is less the product of free will than of poverty and other... social forces beyond the individual's control? And what could be more "progressive" than the belief that the law should aim for social, not merely individual, justice? This work of social, cultural, and legal history uncovers the contested origins and paradoxical consequences of the two protean concepts in the cosmopolitan cities of industrial America at the turn of the twentieth century.

"FAST-PACED . . . PIERCY BREATHES LIFE INTO THE ACTUAL HISTORICAL FIGURES WHO SHAPED THE REVOLUTION."--San Francisco Examiner & ChronicleIn her most... splendid, thought-provoking novel yet, Marge Piercy brings to vibrant life three women who play prominent roles in the tumultuous, bloody French Revolution--as well as their more famous male counterparts. Defiantly independent Claire Lacombe tests her theory: if men can make things happen, perhaps women can too. . . . Manon Philipon finds she has a talent for politics--albeit as the ghostwriter of her husband's speeches. . . . And Pauline Léon knows one thing for certain: the women must apply the pressure or their male colleagues will let them starve. While illuminating the lives of Robespierre, Danton, and Condorcet, Piercy also opens to us the minds and hearts of women who change their world, live their ideals--and are prepared to die for them."MASTERFUL . . . PIERCY BRINGS THE BLOOD AND GUTS, THE IDEAS AND PASSIONS, OF THE REVOLUTION TO LIFE."--The Women's Review of Books"PIERCY'S STORYTELLING POWERS CAPTURE THE TURBULENCE AND EXCITEMENT OF [THIS] LIBERATING ERA."--The Boston Herald

 Sparkling with irrepressible wit, City of Djinns peels back the layers of Delhi's centuries-old history, revealing an extraordinary array of... characters along the way-from eunuchs to descendants of great Moguls. With refreshingly open-minded curiosity, William Dalrymple explores the seven "dead" cities of Delhi as well as the eighth city—today's Delhi. Underlying his quest is the legend of the djinns, fire-formed spirits that are said to assure the city's Phoenix-like regeneration no matter how many times it is destroyed. Entertaining, fascinating, and informative, City of Djinns is an irresistible blend of research and adventure.

From tabloid exposes of child prostitution to the grisly tales of Jack the Ripper, narratives of sexual danger pulsated through Victorian London.... Expertly blending social history and cultural criticism, Judith Walkowitz shows how these narratives reveal the complex dramas of power, politics, and sexuality that were being played out in late nineteenth-century Britain, and how they influenced the language of politics, journalism, and fiction.Victorian London was a world where long-standing traditions of class and gender were challenged by a range of public spectacles, mass media scandals, new commercial spaces, and a proliferation of new sexual categories and identities. In the midst of this changing culture, women of many classes challenged the traditional privileges of elite males andasserted their presence in the public domain.An important catalyst in this conflict, argues Walkowitz, was W. T. Stead's widely read 1885 article about child prostitution. Capitalizing on the uproar caused by the piece and the volatile political climate of the time, women spoke of sexual danger, articulating their own grievances against men, inserting themselves into the public discussion of sex to an unprecedented extent, and gaining new entree to public spaces and journalistic practices. The ultimate manifestation of class anxiety and gender antagonism came in 1888 with the tabloid tales of Jack the Ripper. In between, there were quotidien stories of sexual possibility and urban adventure, and Walkowitz examines them all, showing how women were not simply figures in the imaginary landscape of male spectators, but also central actors in the stories of metropolotin life that reverberated in courtrooms, learned journals, drawing rooms, street corners, and in the letters columns of the daily press.A model of cultural history, this ambitious book will stimulate and enlighten readers across a broad range of interests.

Nominated for an Edgar Award for Best Mystery of the Year, City of Glass inaugurates an intriguing New York Trilogy of novels that The Washington Post... Book World has classified as "post-existentialist private eye...It's as if Kafka has gotten hooked on the gumshoe game and penned his own ever-spiraling version." As a result of a strange phone call in the middle of the night, Quinn, a writer of detective stories, becomes enmeshed in a case more puzzling than any he might have written. Written with hallucinatory clarity, City of Glass combines dark humor with Hitchcock-like suspense.

A graphic novel classic with a new introduction by Art SpiegelmanQuinn writes mysteries. The Washington Post has described him as a... “post-existentialist private eye.” An unknown voice on the telephone is now begging for his help, drawing him into a world and a mystery far stranger than any he ever created in print.Adapted by Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli, with graphics by David Mazzucchelli, Paul Auster’s groundbreaking, Edgar Award-nominated masterwork has been astonishingly transformed into a new visual language.