A treasure-trove of Christian symbolism and allegory drawn from the great American pastime.

Includes reading group guide and excerpt from the author's novel, Dry as rain.

Like John Muir, David Pitt-Brooke stepped out for a walk one morning—a long walk of a thousand kilometres or more through the arid valleys of southern interior British Columbia. He went in search of beauty and lost grace in a landscape that has seen decades of development and upheaval. In Crossing Home Ground he reports back, providing a day-by-day account of his journey’s experiences, from the practical challenges—dealing with blisters, rain and dehydration—to sublime moments of discovery and reconnection with the natural world. Through the course of this journey, Pitt-Brooke’s encounters with the natural world generate starting points for reflections on larger issues: the delicate interconnections of a healthy landscape and, most especially, the increasingly fragile bond between human beings and their home-places. There is no escaping the impact of human beings on the natural world, not even in the most remote countryside, but he finds hope and consolation in surviving pockets of loveliness, the kindness of strangers and the transformative process of the walking itself, a personal pilgrimage across home ground. Crossing Home Ground is a book that, though rooted in one specific place and time, will evoke a universal sense of recognition in a wide variety of readers. It will appeal to hikers, natural-history enthusiasts and anyone who loves the wild countryside and is concerned about the disappearance of Canada’s natural spaces. Pitt-Brooke’s grassland odyssey is sure to become a classic of British Columbia nature writing.

House Crossing is a book of 32 poems about where we live or, more properly, dwell, with each poem entitled by a different attribute of domestic architecture as it is commonly known: Cupola, eaves, attic, beams, etc. Such might lend itself to description, but--reminiscent in part of Ronald Johnson's oeuvre (The Foundations, The Spires and The Ramparts)--in the vision of poet and scholar Laurie Patton each component becomes alive to an actuality beyond physical construct: The poetics of how we hold our ground, even if it is in flux--or as she writes, "A river runs... below the house." The instigation for this poetic cycle is Gaston Bachelard's The Poetics of Space, with this collection a homage to that classic phenomenological analysis. As she writes in her introduction, House Crossing arose as "a straightforward observation about the endurance of Bachelard's work: if a poetics is good enough, and I believe Bachelard's is, then it does not only comment on poetry, but can give rise to poetry as well." What Patton gives rise to is in part an opportunity for us each to live more evocatively in our days and nights in each our own place, building a being, as "Noah's ark stands / at the end of our hallway."

"Thousands of low-income African-Americans, mostly women and children, began in 1976 to move out of Chicago's notorious public housing developments to its mostly white, middle-class suburbs." "They were part of the Gautreaux program, one of the largest court-ordered desegregation efforts in the country's history. Named for the Chicago activist Dorothy Gautreaux, the program formally ended in 1998, but is destined to play a vital role in national housing policy in years to come. In this book, Leonard Rubinowitz and James Rosenbaum tell the story of this unique experiment in racial, social, and economic integration, and examine the factors involved in implementing and sustaining mobility-based programs." "Today, with vouchers replacing public housing, the Gautreaux success story with its strong legacy is the most valuable record of the possibilities for poor people to enhance their life chances by relocating to places where opportunities are greater." --Book Jacket.

Robert W. Snyder's Crossing Broadway tells how disparate groups overcame their mutual suspicions to rehabilitate housing, build new schools, restore parks, and work with the police to bring safety to streets racked by crime and fear. It shows how a neighborhood once nicknamed "Frankfurt on the Hudson" for its large population of German Jews became "Quisqueya Heights"—the home of the nation's largest Dominican community. The story of Washington Heights illuminates New York City's long passage from the Great Depression and World War II through the urban crisis to the globalization and economic inequality of the twenty-first century. Washington Heights residents played crucial roles in saving their neighborhood, but its future as a home for working-class and middle-class people is by no means assured. The growing gap between rich and poor in contemporary New York puts new pressure on the Heights as more affluent newcomers move into buildings that once sustained generations of wage earners and the owners of small businesses. Crossing Broadway is based on historical research, reporting, and oral histories. Its narrative is powered by the stories of real people whose lives illuminate what was won and lost in northern Manhattan's journey from the past to the present. A tribute to a great American neighborhood, this book shows how residents learned to cross Broadway—over the decades a boundary that has separated black and white, Jews and Irish, Dominican-born and American-born—and make common cause in pursuit of one of the most precious rights: the right to make a home and build a better life in New York City.

Brian Newhouse's journey begins with only three rules: no car rides, no walking hills, and no hangers-on. But as he cycles deep into America's heart, the long-hidden terrain of his past begins slowly unfolding.