"How Gentrification is killing our cities, and what we can do about it. Leslie Kern, author of the best-selling Feminist City, travels from Toronto, New York, London, Paris and San Francisco and scrutinizes the myths and lies that surround this most urgent urban crisis of our times: gentrification. This process can be seen today in rising rents and evictions, transformed retail areas, increased policing and broken communities. But Kern argues that...

"Walt Disney World and Orlando have become the world's most popular tourist destination. Using the metaphor of love and marriage, this intriguing book traces the evolution of the Disney World-Orlando relationship, an "economic-development marriage," says the author, characterized by conflict and consensus, individuality and mutual dependency - just like a real marriage." "But there is another side to the story. As the author shows, growth not only...

"In the United States today, one in every 31 adults is under some form of penal control, including one in eleven African American men. How did the "land of the free" become the home of the world's largest prison system? Challenging the belief that America's prison problem originated with the Reagan administration's War on Drugs, Elizabeth Hinton traces the rise of mass incarceration to an ironic source: the social welfare programs of Lyndon Johnson's...

The Death and Life of Great American Cities was described by The New York Times as "perhaps the most influential single work in the history of town planning. ... [It] can also be seen in a much larger context. It is first of all a work of literature; the descriptions of street life as a kind of ballet and the bitingly satiric account of traditional planning theory can still be read for pleasure even by those who long ago absorbed and appropriated...

"Gang- and drug-related violence is the defining crime problem in our country, and has been for decades. The statistics are alarming and the toll incalculable, and despite countless initiatives from government, law enforcement and social service communities, little has proven effective. Still, remarkably, David Kennedy foresees what no one else could imagine: a happy ending. He has been on the front lines ever since putting together the law enforcement...