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Hollow City.
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Iâve been fascinated by cities ever since I was a teenager without a driverâs license on Long Island and my parents let me take the train into Manhattan (âJust be back by midnight!â). In college, I studied architecture and urbanism and learned how cities churned and changed. Today, having written about places like New Orleans, San Francisco, Mumbai and Berlin for publications including Harperâs and The New York Times Magazine, as well as in my books, I know Iâll be walking, riding, and eating my way through cities forever. And reading through them, too!
I remember the first time I realized I was in a city without addressesâDubai, as it happenedâand I was dumbfounded that such a place could exist, let alone succeed. In this book, Deirdre Mask unearths the hidden history of street addressesâa relatively recent invention from the Age of Enlightenmentâand notes how many places ranging from rural West Virginia to hyper-modern Tokyo and Seoul do just fine without them.
In this wild ride from addressless ancient Rome to meticulously gridded and numbered Chicago, Mask explains how addresses have been used to keep track of citizens (for both good and ill) and how street names allow urban communities to define themselves by, say, changing Robert E. Lee Avenue into Martin Luther King Boulevard.
'Deirdre Mask's book was just up my Strasse, alley, avenue and boulevard.' -Simon Garfield, author of Just My Type
'Fascinating ... intelligent but thoroughly accessible ... full of surprises' - Sunday Times
Starting with a simple question, 'what do street addresses do?', Deirdre Mask travels the world and back in time to work out how we describe where we live and what that says about us.
From the chronological numbers of Tokyo to the naming of Bobby Sands Street in Iran, she explores how our address - or lack of one - expressesâŚ
Iâve been fascinated by cities ever since I was a teenager without a driverâs license on Long Island and my parents let me take the train into Manhattan (âJust be back by midnight!â). In college, I studied architecture and urbanism and learned how cities churned and changed. Today, having written about places like New Orleans, San Francisco, Mumbai and Berlin for publications including Harperâs and The New York Times Magazine, as well as in my books, I know Iâll be walking, riding, and eating my way through cities forever. And reading through them, too!
This book takes something so in-your-face yet so often ignored about New York and other 21st-century global metropolisesâtheir polyglot natureâand makes it the focus. I know when I arrive in a major city, the cacophony of myriad languages stands out on that first subway, bus, and tram ride. But soon enough, it all becomes background noise.
By foregrounding this phenomenon, arguing that itâs peaking today as global migration swells, and telling the stories of several tenacious language communities in New Yorkâs outer boroughs, Perlin reads NYC through the alphabets that cover its bodega awnings.
Half of all 7,000-plus human languages may disappear over the next century and - because many have never been recorded - when they're gone, it will be forever. Ross Perlin, a linguist and co-director of the Endangered Language Alliance, is racing against time to map little-known languages across the most linguistically diverse city in history: contemporary New York.
In Language City, Perlin recounts the unique history of immigration that shaped the city, and follows six remarkable yet ordinary speakers of endangered languages deep into their communities to learn how they are maintaining and reviving their languages against overwhelming odds. PerlinâŚ
Iâve been fascinated by cities ever since I was a teenager without a driverâs license on Long Island and my parents let me take the train into Manhattan (âJust be back by midnight!â). In college, I studied architecture and urbanism and learned how cities churned and changed. Today, having written about places like New Orleans, San Francisco, Mumbai and Berlin for publications including Harperâs and The New York Times Magazine, as well as in my books, I know Iâll be walking, riding, and eating my way through cities forever. And reading through them, too!
This book looks at flâneurie, the Gilded Age gentlemenâs pastime of walking through a city purely for curiosityâs sake, through womenâs eyes. Of course, a man has opportunities to walk through a city unnoticed and unimpeded in a way that a woman does not.
Walking with Elkin through cities I know well helped me realize how much I take for granted as a man (significant helpings of anonymity and safety) and the particular joys of liberation cities have offered women past, present, and future.
FINALIST FOR THE PEN/DIAMONSTEIN-SPIELVOGEL AWARD FOR THE ART OF THE ESSAY
A New York Times Notable Book of 2017
The flâneur is the quintessentially masculine figure of privilege and leisure who strides the capitals of the world with abandon. But it is the flâneuse who captures the imagination of the cultural critic Lauren Elkin. In her wonderfully gender-bending new book, the flâneuse is a âdetermined, resourceful individual keenly attuned to the creative potential of the city and the liberating possibilities of a good walk.â Virginia Woolf called it âstreet hauntingâ; Holly Golightly epitomized it in Breakfast at Tiffanyâs; and PattiâŚ
The scenario we are facing is scary: within a few decades, sea levels around the world may well rise by a metre or more as glaciers and ice caps melt due to climate change. Large parts of our coastal cities will be flooded, the basic outline of our world willâŚ
Iâve been fascinated by cities ever since I was a teenager without a driverâs license on Long Island and my parents let me take the train into Manhattan (âJust be back by midnight!â). In college, I studied architecture and urbanism and learned how cities churned and changed. Today, having written about places like New Orleans, San Francisco, Mumbai and Berlin for publications including Harperâs and The New York Times Magazine, as well as in my books, I know Iâll be walking, riding, and eating my way through cities forever. And reading through them, too!
Iâve read more books than I care to remember that treat cities solely as markets, using an economic lens that reduces urbanites to mere maximizers of their own economic self-interest. This book does the opposite, and thatâs why I found it so refreshing.
Urban observer and activist Jeremiah Moss chronicles New York City during the pandemic, a time when thereâs literally nothing to buyâno stores to shop in, no restaurants to eat in, and no fashion trends to keep up with. With the market shut down, Moss finds that neighbors reconnect with neighbors on a human level, and a creative, festival-like atmosphere sweeps the city. This book helped me remember whatâs great about living in a big city despite the many obvious cost-of-living drawbacks.
Author, social critic and "New York City's career elegist" (The New York Times), Jeremiah Moss felt alienated in a town that had become suburbanised and sanitised. Then lockdown launched an unprecedented urban experiment: What happens when an entire social class abandons the city? In the streets made vibrant by New Yorkers left behind, Moss found a sense of freedom he never thought possible. Participating in a historic explosion of protest, resistance and spontaneity. From queer BLM marches to exuberant outdoor dance parties, he discovers that, without "hyper-normal" people to constrain it, New York can be more creative, connected, humane andâŚ
As a writer, artist, and actor throughout my life, Iâve explored and enjoyed many artistic forms. While I appreciate books across many genres, I elevate to the highest level those works that manage to break conventional boundaries and create something original. In my own work, I have always challenged myself to create something unique with a medium that has never been done before. At the same time, I have sought to discover a process and resulting work that inspires readersâ own creativity and challenges them to expand their imagination.
I Hate the Internet is an uncompromising punch in the face that blends comedy with a didactic, experimental style. It names names and kicks ass. Itâs vibrant and energizing. The majority of traditional literary fiction at its core finds its value in teaching empathy through believable characters. And while thereâs nothing wrong with that, we still stand today with a world collapsing around us environmentally and politically. We need more books that just say fuck it, conservative forms have not saved us from global warming, political fascism, or dehumanizing capitalism so letâs try something different. At least hereâs a unique attempt to rage against the machine. I call it a must-read.
In New York in the middle of the twentieth century, comic book companies figured out how to make millions from comics without paying their creators anything. In San Francisco at the start of the twenty-first century, tech companies figured out how to make millions from online abuse without paying its creators anything.
In the 1990s, Adeline drew a successful comic book series that ended up making her kind-of famous. In 2013, Adeline aired some unfashionable opinions that made their way onto the Internet. The reaction of the Internet, being a tool for making millions in advertising revenue from online abuse,âŚ
Years ago in a psycholinguistics class, I discovered that a personâs primary languageânot just their vocabulary but the structure of the language itselfâshapes the way that person perceives the world and relationships around them. Ever since, Iâve been fascinated with perspective and how perceptions of an event are shaped by who is experiencing them, what stage of life theyâre in, the language they speak, and so on. As a full-time marketer in addition to an author, I have to consider every angle of a project before I can begin, whether Iâm designing an ad or writing dialogue between characters.
The Alvarados are an unhealthy family with a very big communication problem. The patriarch turns into a shell of himself obsessed only with rainfall, the matriarch is hiding her own secrets, and their adult children are all in varying stages of trouble in their own relationships.
I loved that this book was set in 2016, in California, centered around a Mexican-American family, and did not explicitly address immigration issues or Donald Trumpâeven if that was very much hinted at towards the end of the novel.
Aside from the familyâs journey to healthier relationships with themselves and each other, it was refreshing to see another perspective of that moment in time. It was a good reminder to me that we all contain multitudes, and that no single story is the whole story.
FORECAST: Storm clouds are on the horizon in L.A. Weather, a fun, fast-paced novel of a Mexican-American family from the author of the #1 Los Angeles Times bestseller Esperanza's Box of Saints
L.A. is parched, dry as a bone, and all Oscar, the weather-obsessed patriarch of the Alvarado family, desperately wants is a little rain. He's harboring a costly secret that distracts him from everything else. His wife, Keila, desperate for a life with a little more intimacy and a little less Weather Channel, feels she has no choice but to end their marriage. Their three daughters-Claudia, a television chefâŚ
A memoir of homecoming by bicycle and how opening our hearts to others enables us to open our hearts to ourselves.
When the 2008 recession hit, 33-year-old Heidi Beierle was single, underemployed, and looking for a way out of her darkness. She returned to school, but her gloom deepened. AllâŚ
I am a White person who grew up in a primarily Black DC neighborhood in the 1980s. Growing up in a Black community in DC at a time when the city was experiencing a cascade of crises â from the spread of crack to an AIDS epidemic to a failing school system â has fundamentally shaped my life and my view of the world. When I returned in the early twenty-first century to my city to find it had significantly changed and that many of my Black neighbors had been pushed out, I was compelled to learn more about DC before gentrification and to understand the path the city I love had taken.
This is a great book if you want to understand how some expressions of blackness can be valued while Black people are being displaced.
Derek Hyra describes gentrification and racial change in the Shaw neighborhood of Washington, DC â which went from 90 percent Black in 1970 to 30 percent Black by 2010. Shawâs status as the cultural epicenter of the Black community in the early twentieth century has become a selling point: many of the new establishments highlight this Black history, with odes to Marvin Gaye, Langston Hughes, and Duke Ellington in their names and featured artwork.
Hyra argues many of the White newcomers to Shaw embrace its Black history while ignoring the needs and preferences of contemporary Black residents. Thus, Black residents are experiencing both political and cultural displacement as they have lost political and economic power in the neighborhood.
For long-time residents of Washington, D.C.'s Shaw/U Street, the neighborhood has become almost unrecognizable in recent years. Where the city's most infamous open-air drug market once stood, a farmers' market now sells grass-fed beef and homemade duck egg ravioli. On the corner where AM.PM carryout used to dish out soul food, a new establishment markets its $28 foie gras burger. Shaw is experiencing a dramatic transformation, from "ghetto" to "gilded ghetto," where white newcomers are rehabbing homes, developing dog parks, and paving the way for a third wave coffee shop on nearly every block.Race, Class, and Politics in the CappuccinoâŚ
Iâm a Jamaican and Korean American author of young adult romance, and when crafting my stories, I love to create characters who go against the expectations thrust upon them, whether theyâre based on race, ethnicity, sex, gender, sexuality, ability, etc. As a woman, as someone with multiple ethnic identities, as someone who isnât neurotypical, and someone who doesnât subscribe to the norms of gender and sexuality, navigating intersectionality has been a large part of my life and, therefore, my work. Rules should be broken when they're the ones telling us we canât do something based on who we are.
This book is full of rule-breakers, but not in the way youâd think. Rhea and her friends try to combat gentrification in their South L.A. neighborhood in the most unconventional way imaginable by inventing a fake gang; however, they are soon blamed for a very real murder.
I lived in West Baltimore for a time and saw the effects of gentrification taking over my neighborhood even in the short two years that I was there, so this book really resonated with me on a personal level. The premise reminded me of those memes of people claiming to shoot out the windows every few months to keep the rent low. While itâs a joke, there is a very real fear behind it, and this is a complex issue that Adia tackles with such a fresh voice and nuanced approach.
Winner of the 2024 Coretta Scott King John Steptoe New Talent Award
A raised fist against the destructive forces of gentrification and a love letter to communities of color everywhere, Jade Adia's unforgettable debut tells the darkly hilarious story of three best friends willing to do whatever it takes to stay together.
The gang is fake, but the fear is real.
Rheaâs neighborhood is fading awayâthe mom-and-pop shops of her childhood forced out to make space for an artisanal kombucha brewery here, a hot yoga studio there. And everywhere, the feeling that this place is no longer meant for her.âŚ
I am a White person who grew up in a primarily Black DC neighborhood in the 1980s. Growing up in a Black community in DC at a time when the city was experiencing a cascade of crises â from the spread of crack to an AIDS epidemic to a failing school system â has fundamentally shaped my life and my view of the world. When I returned in the early twenty-first century to my city to find it had significantly changed and that many of my Black neighbors had been pushed out, I was compelled to learn more about DC before gentrification and to understand the path the city I love had taken.
Read this book if you want to understand the nuances of blackness in the nationâs capital.
Brandi Thompson Summers argues in her book, Black in Place, that gentrification along the H Street Corridor in DC has involved the embracing of blackness as an aesthetic alongside the displacement of actual Black people. Summers explains how blackness came to be valued as a prized aesthetic at the same time that Black people experienced the heavy policing, predatory lending, and displacement that both make possible and accompany the gentrification of Black neighborhoods.
While Washington, D.C., is still often referred to as "Chocolate City," it has undergone significant demographic, political, and economic change in the last decade. In D.C., no place represents this shift better than the H Street corridor. In this book, Brandi Thompson Summers documents D.C.'s shift to a "post-chocolate" cosmopolitan metropolis by charting H Street's economic and racial developments. In doing so, she offers a theoretical framework for understanding how blackness is aestheticized and deployed to organize landscapes and raise capital. Summers focuses on the continuing significance of blackness in a place like the nation's capital, how blackness contributes toâŚ
Think how tough it is to reach adulthood in today's complicated world. Now imagine doing so in front of a global audience. That's what growing up in show business is like. Every youthful mistake laid bare for all to see. Malefactors looking to ensnare the naive at any turn. EachâŚ
I started writing for kids and teens before I became a parent myself, but now, seeing these kinds of stories from both perspectives, Iâm even more passionate about helping foster conversations among families, about the things that are hard to talk about. In the time of pandemics and global warming and school shootings, not to mention the access the internet provides, kids have more questions and concerns than ever. Iâve found, both in my research and in practice, that being honest with kids in a way that they can understand and process is a true gift to them.
Giles does a wonderful job with a current hot topic that might come up a lot for kids: gentrification. Take Back the Block made me want to leap into action, and thatâs a pretty magical thing to be able to say about a book! Not only did I want to read more about these characters, but I wanted to get involved in my own city to preserve homes and mitigate gentrification. Change is constant, and kids will love this book for talking about the changes we can control and those we cannot, and how to see the difference. Parents will appreciate a way to concretely illustrate what gentrification is, and to have honest conversations about it with their kids.
Wes Henderson has the best style in sixth grade. That--and hanging out with his crew (his best friends since little-kid days) and playing video games--is what he wants to be thinking about at the start of the school year, not the protests his parents are always dragging him to.
But when a real estate developer makes an offer to buy Kensington Oaks, the neighborhood WesâŚ