City of Extremes


Book Description

A powerful critique of urban development in greater Johannesburg since the end of apartheid in 1994.




Extreme Cities


Book Description

A cutting exploration of how cities drive climate change while being on the frontlines of the coming climate crisis How will climate change affect our lives? Where will its impacts be most deeply felt? Are we doing enough to protect ourselves from the coming chaos? In Extreme Cities, Ashley Dawson argues that cities are ground zero for climate change, contributing the lion’s share of carbon to the atmosphere, while also lying on the frontlines of rising sea levels. Today, the majority of the world’s megacities are located in coastal zones, yet few of them are adequately prepared for the floods that will increasingly menace their shores. Instead, most continue to develop luxury waterfront condos for the elite and industrial facilities for corporations. These not only intensify carbon emissions, but also place coastal residents at greater risk when water levels rise. In Extreme Cities, Dawson offers an alarming portrait of the future of our cities, describing the efforts of Staten Island, New York, and Shishmareff, Alaska residents to relocate; Holland’s models for defending against the seas; and the development of New York City before and after Hurricane Sandy. Our best hope lies not with fortified sea walls, he argues. Rather, it lies with urban movements already fighting to remake our cities in a more just and equitable way. As much a harrowing study as a call to arms Extreme Cities is a necessary read for anyone concerned with the threat of global warming, and of the cities of the world.




Rio de Janeiro


Book Description

A book as rich and sprawling as the seductive metropolis it evokes, Rio de Janeiro builds a kaleidoscopic portrait of this city of extremes, and its history of conflict and corruption. Award-winning novelist, ex-government minister and sociologist, Luiz Eduardo Soares tells the story of Rio through the everyday lives of its people: gangsters and police, activists, politicians and struggling migrant workers, each with their own version of the city. Taking us on a journey into Rio's intricate world of favelas, beaches and corridors of power, Soares reveals one of the most extraordinary cities in the world in all its seething, agonistic beauty.




Heat Wave


Book Description

The “compelling” story behind the 1995 Chicago weather disaster that killed hundreds—and what it revealed about our broken society (Boston Globe). On July 13, 1995, Chicagoans awoke to a blistering day in which the temperature would reach 106 degrees. The heat index—how the temperature actually feels on the body—would hit 126. When the heat wave broke a week later, city streets had buckled; records for electrical use were shattered; and power grids had failed, leaving residents without electricity for up to two days. By July 20, over seven hundred people had perished—twenty times the number of those struck down by Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Heat waves kill more Americans than all other natural disasters combined. Until now, no one could explain either the overwhelming number or the heartbreaking manner of the deaths resulting from the 1995 Chicago heat wave. Meteorologists and medical scientists have been unable to account for the scale of the trauma, and political officials have puzzled over the sources of the city’s vulnerability. In Heat Wave, Eric Klinenberg takes us inside the anatomy of the metropolis to conduct what he calls a “social autopsy,” examining the social, political, and institutional organs of the city that made this urban disaster so much worse than it ought to have been. He investigates why some neighborhoods experienced greater mortality than others, how city government responded, and how journalists, scientists, and public officials reported and explained these events. Through years of fieldwork, interviews, and research, he uncovers the surprising and unsettling forms of social breakdown that contributed to this human catastrophe as hundreds died alone behind locked doors and sealed windows, out of contact with friends, family, community groups, and public agencies. As this incisive and gripping account demonstrates, the widening cracks in the social foundations of American cities made visible by the 1995 heat wave remain in play in America’s cities today—and we ignore them at our peril. Includes photos and a new preface on meeting the challenges of climate change in urban centers “Heat Wave is not so much a book about weather, as it is about the calamitous consequences of forgetting our fellow citizens. . . . A provocative, fascinating book, one that applies to much more than weather disasters.” —Chicago Sun-Times “It’s hard to put down Heat Wave without believing you’ve just read a tale of slow murder by public policy.” —Salon “A classic. I can’t recommend it enough.” —Chris Hayes




City of Quartz


Book Description

This new edition of the visionary social history of Los Angeles is “as central to the L.A. canon as anything that . . . Joan Didion wrote in the seventies” (New Yorker) No metropolis has been more loved or more hated. To its official boosters, “Los Angeles brings it all together.” To detractors, L.A. is a sunlit mortuary where “you can rot without feeling it.” To Mike Davis, the author of this fiercely elegant and wide- ranging work of social history, Los Angeles is both utopia and dystopia, a place where the last Joshua trees are being plowed under to make room for model communities in the desert, where the rich have hired their own police to fend off street gangs, as well as armed Beirut militias. In City of Quartz, Davis reconstructs L.A.’s shadow history and dissects its ethereal economy. He tells us who has the power and how they hold on to it. He gives us a city of Dickensian extremes, Pynchonesque conspiracies, and a desperation straight out of Nathaniel West—a city in which we may glimpse our own future mirrored with terrifying clarity. In this new edition, Davis provides a dazzling update on the city’s current status.




Going to Extremes


Book Description

"In Going to Extremes, renowned legal scholar and best-selling author Cass R. Sunstein offers startling insights into why and when people gravitate toward extremism."--Inside jacket.




Taming the Disorderly City


Book Description

In postapartheid Johannesburg, tensions of race and class manifest themselves starkly in struggles over 'rights to the city'. Martin J. Murray brings together urban theory and local knowledge to draw a picture of this city, where real estate agents and the very poor fight for control of space.




City of Quartz


Book Description

Recounts the story of Los Angeles. He tells a tale of greed, manipulation, power and prejudice that has made Los Angeles one of the most cosmopolitan and most class-divided cities in the United States.




The City (with bonus short story The Neighbor)


Book Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Includes Dean Koontz’s short story “The Neighbor”—first time in print! Dean Koontz is at the peak of his acclaimed powers with this major new novel. A young boy, a musical prodigy, discovering life’s wonders—and mortal dangers. His best friend, also a gifted musician, who will share his journey into destiny. His remarkable family, tested by the extremes of evil and bound by the depths of love . . . on a collision course with a band of killers about to unleash anarchy. And two unlikely allies, an everyday hero tempered by the past and a woman of mystery who holds the key to the future. These are the people of The City, a place where enchantment and malice entwine, courage and honor are found in the most unexpected quarters, and the way forward lies buried deep inside the heart. Brilliantly illumined by magic dark and light, their unforgettable story is a riveting, soul-stirring saga that speaks to everyone, a major milestone in the celebrated career of #1 New York Times bestselling author Dean Koontz and a dazzling realization of the evergreen dreams we all share. Praise for The City “Beautifully crafted and poignant . . . The City is many things: serious, lighthearted, nostalgic, courageous, scary, and mysterious. . . . [It] will have readers staying up late at night.”—New York Journal of Books “[Koontz] can flat-out write. . . . The message of hope and depiction of how the choices you make can change your life ring true and will remain with you once the book has been closed.”—Bookreporter Acclaim for Dean Koontz “Perhaps more than any other author, Koontz writes fiction perfectly suited to the mood of America: novels that acknowledge the reality and tenacity of evil but also the power of good . . . that entertain vastly as they uplift.”—Publishers Weekly “A rarity among bestselling writers, Koontz continues to pursue new ways of telling stories, never content with repeating himself.”—Chicago Sun-Times “Tumbling, hallucinogenic prose. ‘Serious’ writers . . . might do well to examine his technique.”—The New York Times Book Review “[Koontz] has always had near-Dickensian powers of description, and an ability to yank us from one page to the next that few novelists can match.”—Los Angeles Times “Koontz is a superb plotter and wordsmith. He chronicles the hopes and fears of our time in broad strokes and fine detail, using popular fiction to explore the human condition.”—USA Today “Characters and the search for meaning, exquisitely crafted, are the soul of [Koontz’s] work. . . . One of the master storytellers of this or any age.”—The Tampa Tribune “A literary juggler.”—The Times (London)




Living with Nature's Extremes


Book Description

Gilbert White has been called the most renowned geographer internationally of the twentieth century, and one who personifies the ideal of a natural resources scientist committed to the stewardship of our planet. He has educated the nation and the world on how to change the ways we manage water resources, mitigate natural hazards, and assess the environment.