"Municipal Boundary Battles explores the motivations, land use effects, and financial implications of municipal boundary adjustments across Canada, focusing mainly on annexations and amalgamations--the most frequent means to adjust boundaries and reform local governments in this country. The authors uncover hidden motivations, untangle behind-the-scenes political machinations, and document the ensuing boundary battles, with a focus on mid-size cities and small towns rather than major Canadian metropolitan areas. Through empirical evidence, case studies, and examples among several provinces, the collection helps develop generalizations and inform best practices for municipal boundary adjustments and reform. The volume aims to study this phenomenon to explain how the esoteric aspects of boundary adjustments work in more practical applications, offering political scientists, geographers, municipal officials, and planning practitioners fresh perspectives that contradict much of the prevailing understanding of boundary adjustments. Contributors: Sandeep Agrawal, Cody Gretzinger, John Heseltine, John Meligrana, Jordan Rea, Amrita Singh, Jon Taylor, Zack Taylor. Afterword by Andrew Sancton."--

George Perkins Marsh Prize, American Society for Environmental History VSNY Book Award, New York Metropolitan Chapter of the Victorian Society in America Hornblower Award for a First Book, New York Society Library James Broussard Best First Book Prize, Society for Historians of the Early American Republic With pigs roaming the streets and cows foraging in the Battery, antebellum Manhattan would have been unrecognizable to inhabitants of today’s sprawling metropolis. Fruits and vegetables came from small market gardens in the city, and manure piled high on streets and docks was gold to nearby farmers. But as Catherine McNeur reveals in this environmental history of Gotham, a battle to control the boundaries between city and country was already being waged, and the winners would take dramatic steps to outlaw New York’s wild side. “[A] fine book which make[s] a real contribution to urban biography.” —Joseph Rykwert, Times Literary Supplement “Tells an odd story in lively prose...The city McNeur depicts in Taming Manhattan is the pestiferous obverse of the belle epoque city of Henry James and Edith Wharton that sits comfortably in many imaginations...[Taming Manhattan] is a smart book that engages in the old fashioned business of trying to harvest lessons for the present from the past.” —Alexander Nazaryan, New York Times

Canada’s largest cities have faced exponential growth, with the trajectory rising further still. Due to their high density, cities are the primary sites for opportunities in economic prosperity, green innovation, and cultural activity, and also for critical challenges in homelessness and extreme poverty, air pollution, Indigenous-municipal relationship-building, racial injustice, and transportation gridlock. While city governments are at the forefront of mitigating the challenges of urban life, they are given insufficient power to effectively attend to public needs. Cities and the Constitution confronts the misalignment between the importance of municipalities and their constitutional status. While our constitution is often considered a living document, Canada has one of the most complicated amending formulas in the world, making change very difficult. Cities are thus constitutionally vulnerable to unilateral provincial action and reliant on other levels of government for funding. Could municipal power be reimagined without disrupting the existing constitutional structure, or could the Constitution be reformed to designate cities a distinct tier of government? Among other novel proposals, this groundbreaking volume explores the idea of recognizing municipalities in provincial constitutions. The first volume of a complementary pair, authored by renowned Canadian legal and urban studies scholars, Cities and the Constitution suggests contemporary solutions to one of our most pressing policy dilemmas.

St Albans is unique in having been the site of two pivotal battles during the Wars of the Roses, yet this is the first book-length account to have been published. It offers a gripping account of the fighting, and of the politics and intrigue that led to it, and it incorporates the results of the latest research. The authors also plot the events of over 500 years ago onto the twenty-first century landscape of St Albans so that the visitor can retrace the course of each battle on the present-day ground.

John Engler, former Governor of Michigan, once claimed that redistricting is one of the purest actions a legislative body can take. Academicians and political leaders alike, however, have regularly debated the ideal way by to redistrict national and state legislatures. Rather than being the pure process that Governor Engler envisioned, redistricting has led to repeated court battles waged on such traditional democratic values as one person, one vote, and minority rights. Instead of being an opportunity to help ensure maximum representation for the citizens, the process has become a cat and mouse game in many states with citizen representation seemingly the farthest idea from anyone’s mind. From a purely political perspective, those in power in the state legislature at the time of redistricting largely act like they have unilateral authority to do as they please. In this volume, contributors discuss why such an assumption is concerning in the modern political environment.

In late 1913 the newly formed Federal League declared itself a major league in competition with the established National and American Leagues. Backed by some of America’s wealthiest merchants and industrialists, the new organization posed a real challenge to baseball’s prevailing structure. For the next two years the well-established leagues fought back furiously in the press, in the courts, and on the field. The story of this fascinating and complex historical battle centers on the machinations of both the owners and the players, as the Federals struggled for profits and status, and players organized baseball’s first real union. Award winning author, Daniel R. Levitt gives us the most authoritative account yet published of the short-lived Federal League, the last professional baseball league to challenge the National League and American League monopoly.