New Yorkers have always been pressed for space in life and in death. Central Park is synonymous with New York City. But without Green-Wood Cemetery, located in South Brooklyn, Central Park would have never existed. Founded in 1838, Green-Wood became the city’s most popular tourist attraction. The cemetery was so popular that urban planners challenged architects to come up with plans for a separate green-space for Manhattan. Hence, both Central Park, founded in 1857, and Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, in 1867, were born. Green-Wood presented not only a place to bury the dead but a meditative haven away from the hustle and bustle of the city. Other cemeteries followed in the park style, including Sleepy Hollow and Woodlawn. New York’s changing cultural landscape made Ferncliff Cemetery one of the most coveted places to spend eternity, with the rising popularity of Westchester County and suburban living. New Yorkers even secured a place for the four-legged members of the family with Hartsdale Pet Cemetery, now the largest and oldest pet cemetery in the United States. From the movers and shakers of New York society, to corrupt political bosses and mafiosi, Jazz legends, and a Brooklyn native son who returned to Green-Wood as one of the most famous artists of the 20th century, the stories of the permanent residents of these cemeteries are just as diverse and vibrant as the city itself. To travel through the cemeteries of New York is to travel through the hidden history of what some consider to be the greatest city in the world.

Urban historian Kenneth Jackson (The Encyclopedia of New York) and photographer Camilo Vergara collaborate to present a fascinating and beautiful examination of the American cemetery.

In 1914, desperate for land after the Gold Rush brought a population explosion to San Francisco, the city exiled its cemeteries, barring burials within city limits and relocating its existing graveyards to the tiny town of Colma, just south of Daly City, spawning America's only necropolis, where the dead outnumber the living 1000 to 1. But there's more to the story of the Bay Area's cemeteries than this expulsion. Silent Cities San Francisco reveals the complex cultural makeup of the Bay Area, where diversity and history collide, pitting the dead against the living in a race for space and memorialization.

“The definition of a single session read.” —Eoin Colfer, bestselling author of Artemis Fowl For fans of Station Eleven and The Last of Us, an apocalyptic tale of a young woman fighting for life and justice in the tyrannical Phoenix City—the only place in Ireland yet to be overrun by the flesh-eating skrake Outside the walls of Phoenix City, where the plague has overrun Ireland, one bite from the savage skrake means death or infection. Inside, Orpen and the other survivors of the plague gather in meager numbers. They are protected from the skrake, but the city is by no means a refuge. Orpen is the only outsider ever admitted to the ranks of the banshees, the fierce, all-women force of fighters who push back the hungry skrake gathered at the city walls. Phoenix City is ruled with an oppressive hand—its best leaders power-hungry and ruthless—and the banshees keep the peace, or shatter it, depending on their orders. But unrest is building in the city, and even some banshees question the cost of implementing the management’s patriarchal rule. When two banshees are publicly executed, and a foraging trip beyond the walls goes bad, Orpen knows she must make a choice between survival within a cruel society or treacherous freedom beyond the walls. She will need to muster all her courage and prowess if she and her fellow banshees are going to be able to find a way to escape—and rebuild a society worth fighting for.

Vol. 26- includes the report on the schools for the deaf and dumb in central and western Europe by Rev. George E. Day.