Nathan Vass has been driving a Seattle city bus at night for the last decade. He began writing a popular blog, The View from Nathan's Bus, about his encounters with the riders of the No. 7 bus, which cuts through the heart of the city's Rainier Valley, one of the most racially and ethnically diverse zip codes in the US. Nathan's blog entries grew into this book. His stories and photography illuminate an overlooked part of urban life and highlight the simple connections people make on a daily basis. His depictions of interactions on the city bus range from heartbreaking to hilarious to inspiring.
It's time for America to move beyond zoning, argues city planner M. Nolan Gray in Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It. With lively explanations, Gray shows why zoning abolition is a necessary--if not sufficient--condition for building more affordable, vibrant, equitable, and sustainable cities. Gray lays the groundwork for this ambitious cause by clearing up common misconceptions about how American cities regulate growth and examining four contemporary critiques of zoning (its role in increasing housing costs, restricting growth in our most productive cities, institutionalizing racial and economic segregation, and mandating sprawl). He sets out some of the efforts currently underway to reform zoning and charts how land-use regulation might work in the post-zoning American city. Arbitrary Lines is an invitation to rethink the rules that will continue to shape American life--where we may live or work, who we may encounter, how we may travel. If the task seems daunting, the good news is that we have nowhere to go but up
A masterful narrative—with echoes of Evicted and The Color of Law—that brings to life the structures, policies, and beliefs that divide us Mark Lange and Nicole Smith have never met, but if they make the moves they are contemplating—Mark, a white suburbanite, to West Baltimore, and Nicole, a black woman from a poor city neighborhood, to a prosperous suburb—it will defy the way the Baltimore region has been programmed for a century. It is one region, but separate worlds. And it was designed to be that way. In this deeply reported, revelatory story, duPont Award–winning journalist Lawrence Lanahan chronicles how the region became so highly segregated and why its fault lines persist today. Mark and Nicole personify the enormous disparities in access to safe housing, educational opportunities, and decent jobs. As they eventually pack up their lives and change places, bold advocates and activists—in the courts and in the streets—struggle to figure out what it will take to save our cities and communities: Put money into poor, segregated neighborhoods? Make it possible for families to move into areas with more opportunity? The Lines Between Us is a riveting narrative that compels reflection on America's entrenched inequality—and on where the rubber meets the road not in the abstract, but in our own backyards. Taking readers from church sermons to community meetings to public hearings to protests to the Supreme Court to the death of Freddie Gray, Lanahan deftly exposes the intricacy of Baltimore's hypersegregation through the stories of ordinary people living it, shaping it, and fighting it, day in and day out. This eye-opening account of how a city creates its black and white places, its rich and poor spaces, reveals that these problems are not intractable; but they are designed to endure until each of us—despite living in separate worlds—understands we have something at stake.
This beautifully illustrated board book shows readers how lines make up a whole: a whole square, house, town, city, and universe! Line, Lines Square, Squares Town Line, Lines Circle, Circles Go round Think beyond shapes. Beyond colors. Beyond letters and numbers. With poetic text and beautiful illustrations, this board book shows us how individual pieces make up a whole. And not just a whole house or a whole town, or a whole city, but a whole universe. This book celebrates both the simplicity and complexity of the world around us!
A WWII novel of courage and conviction, based on the true experience of the men who fought fires as conscientious objectors and the women who fought prejudice to serve in the Women's Army Corps. Since the attack on Pearl Harbor, Gordon Hooper and his buddy Jack Armitage have stuck to their values as conscientious objectors. Much to their families' and country's chagrin, they volunteer as smokejumpers rather than enlisting, parachuting into and extinguishing raging wildfires in Oregon. But the number of winter blazes they're called to seems suspiciously high, and when an accident leaves Jack badly injured, Gordon realizes the facts don't add up. A member of the Women's Army Corps, Dorie Armitage has long been ashamed of her brother's pacifism, but she's shocked by news of his accident. Determined to find out why he was harmed, she arrives at the national forest under the guise of conducting an army report . . . and finds herself forced to work with Gordon. He believes it's wrong to lie; she's willing to do whatever it takes for justice to be done. As they search for clues, Gordon and Dorie must wrestle with their convictions about war and peace and decide what to do with the troubling secrets they discover.
Told in their separate voices, sixteen-year-old Prince Oliver, who wants to break free of his fairy-tale existence, and fifteen-year-old Delilah, a loner obsessed with Prince Oliver and the book in which he exists, work together to seek his freedom.
What do walking, weaving, observing, storytelling, singing, drawing and writing have in common? The answer is that they all proceed along lines. In this extraordinary book Tim Ingold imagines a world in which everyone and everything consists of interwoven or interconnected lines and lays the foundations for a completely new discipline: the anthropological archaeology of the line. Ingold’s argument leads us through the music of Ancient Greece and contemporary Japan, Siberian labyrinths and Roman roads, Chinese calligraphy and the printed alphabet, weaving a path between antiquity and the present. Drawing on a multitude of disciplines including archaeology, classical studies, art history, linguistics, psychology, musicology, philosophy and many others, and including more than seventy illustrations, this book takes us on an exhilarating intellectual journey that will change the way we look at the world and how we go about in it. This Routledge Classics edition includes a new preface by the author.
In 1661 Madrid, Ana is still grieving the loss of her husband when her niece, sixteen-year-old Juliana, suddenly vanishes. Ana frantically searches the girl’s room and comes across a diary. Journeying to southern Spain in the hope of finding her, Ana immerses herself in her niece’s private thoughts. After a futile search in Seville, she comes to Juliana’s final entries, and, discovering the horrifying reason for the girl’s flight, abandons her search. In 1992 Missouri, in her deceased mother’s home, Rachel finds a packet of letters, and a diary written by a woman named Juliana. Rachel’s reserved mother has never mentioned these items, but Rachel recognizes the names Ana and Juliana: her mother uttered them on her deathbed. She soon becomes immersed in Juliana’s diary, which recounts the young woman’s journey to Mexico City and her life in a convent. As she learns the truth about Juliana’s tragic family history, Rachel seeks to understand her connection to the writings—hoping that in finding those answers, she will somehow heal the wounds caused by her mother’s lifelong reticence.
From the acclaimed creator of Subway Book Review, Between the Lines gloriously takes to the underground and showcases in over 170 interviews what moves us forward—a thrilling ride as unexpected as New York City itself. “Subway Book Review has changed how we look at books.” —Forbes “[Beutter Cohen’s] rosy view of the subway is a refreshing contrast.” —The Cut, New York magazine “Subway Book Review is one of the few purely good things on the internet.” —Esquire For the better part of a decade, Uli Beutter Cohen rode the subway through New York City’s underground to observe society through the lens of our most creative thinkers: the readers of books. Between the Lines is a timely collection of beloved and never-before-published stories that reflect who we are and where we are going. In over 170 interviews, Uli shares nuanced insights into our collective psyche and gives us an invaluable document of our challenges and our potential. Complete with original photography, and countless intriguing book recommendations, Between the Lines is an enthusiastic celebration of the ways stories invite us into each other’s lives, and a call to action for imagining a bold, empathetic future together. Meet Yahdon, who reads Dapper Dan: Made in Harlem and talks about the power of symbols in fashion. Diana shares how Orlando shaped her journey as a trans woman. Saima reads They Say, I Say and speaks about the power of her hijab. Notable New Yorkers open up about their lives and reading habits, including photographer Jamel Shabazz, filmmaker Katja Blichfeld, painter Devon Rodriguez, comedian Aparna Nancherla, fashion editor Lynn Yaeger, playwright Jeremy O. Harris, fashion designer and TV personality Leah McSweeney, designer Waris Ahluwalia, artist Debbie Millman, activist Amani al-Khatahtbeh, and esteemed authors such as Jia Tolentino, Roxane Gay, Ashley C. Ford, Eileen Myles, Min Jin Lee, and many more.
