Sunbelt cities like Atlanta, Charlotte, and Miami, with their international airports, have a transportation advantage that overwhelms global competition from other southern cities. Why? The short answer to this question seems to be intuitive, but the long answer lies at the intersection of built infrastructure policies, civic boosterism, and the changing nature of American cities. Simply put, Charlotte leaders invested in the future and took advantage of its opportunities. In the twentieth century Charlotte, North Carolina, underwent several generational changes in leadership and saw the emergence of a pro-growth coalition active in matters of the city’s ambience, race relations, business decisions, and use of state and federal government grants-in-aid. In The Transformative City, Wilbur C. Rich examines the complex interrelationships of these factors to illustrate the uniqueness of North Carolina’s most populous city and explores the ways in which the development and success of Charlotte Douglas International Airport has in turn led to development in the city itself, including the growth of both the financial industries and political sectors. Rich also examines the role the federal government had in airport development, banking, and race relation reforms. The Transformative City traces the economic transformation of Charlotte as a city and its airport as an agent of change.

In their first book, acclaimed architects Ken Pursley and Craig Dixon explore how to create gracious homes with welcoming entryways, soulful interiors, inviting porches, and ebullient gardens. Founded on the simple principle “Build beautiful things,” the architectural team of Pursley Dixon, like populist architects Bobby McAlpine and Jeff Dungan, is known for blending elements of tradition with a modern lifestyle. In Finding Home, they share 15 stunning houses in three distinct styles: rustic mountain escapes, dreamy retreats by the water, and elegant houses in town. Each house has its own thoughtful visual narrative, but all are connected on an innate and authentic level by their sense of proportion, attention to detail, and a marvelous affinity with nature, displayed in their soothing neutral palettes, oversize windows that bring the outdoors in, and natural materials such as rough-hewn stone and unfinished wood. Little touches of humanity await discovery, such as a sleeping nook perched right out into the highest branches of a tree. These eccentricities and secrets add to the distinctly Southern sense of warmth and refuge these homes provide, homes whose open interiors and majestic porches easily accommodate family and gatherings. Featuring their own interior design work as well as that of acclaimed decorators such as Suzanne Kasler, Phoebe Howard, and Circa Interiors, Finding Home is about creating houses of inherent beauty that will spark an emotional connection to last a lifetime.

Airports used to be places we just passed through on our way to somewhere else. But with an increase in layovers and ever-mounting delays, "dwell-time" in airports has become an inevitable, tedious, and often infuriating part of travel today. This essential guidebook won't get you where you want to go faster, but it does provide great suggestions for eating well, taking care of business, and having fun while you wait.In clear, cleverly written profiles of each airport, Harriet Baskas, Expedia.com's airport expert, spells out: the best places to eat and what local specialties to try; diversions for kids (playgrounds, observation decks, and museums); quick trips to make by cab (including times to the nearest city); locations of business centers and data ports; shops with interesting, reasonably priced items; well-stocked bookstores; art and history exhibits; clean places to shower and quiet corners for taking a nap. In some airports, she reveals, you can even get a dentist to look at that troublesome tooth, a shoemaker to fix a wobbly heel, and a masseuse to case travel-induced kinks -- and crankiness.Organized alphabetically for easy reference. Stuck at the Airport is the indispensable travel companion for business and leisure travelers alike.

In The Sonic Episteme Robin James examines how twenty-first-century conceptions of sound as acoustic resonance shape notions of the social world, personhood, and materiality in ways that support white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. Drawing on fields ranging from philosophy and sound studies to black feminist studies and musicology, James shows how what she calls the sonic episteme—a set of sound-based rules that qualitatively structure social practices in much the same way that neoliberalism uses statistics—employs a politics of exception to maintain hegemonic neoliberal and biopolitical projects. Where James sees the normcore averageness of Taylor Swift and Spandau Ballet as contributing to the sonic episteme's marginalization of nonnormative conceptions of gender, race, and personhood, the black feminist political ontologies she identifies in Beyoncé's and Rihanna's music challenge such marginalization. In using sound to theorize political ontology, subjectivity, and power, James argues for the further articulation of sonic practices that avoid contributing to the systemic relations of domination that biopolitical neoliberalism creates and polices.