With a new afterword covering the two decades since its first publication, two of Washington, D.C.’s most respected journalists expose one of America’s most tragic ironies: how the nation’s capital, often a gleaming symbol of peace and hope, is the setting for vicious contradictions and devastating conflicts over race, class, and power. Jaffe and Sherwood have chillingly chronicled the descent of the District of Columbia—congressional hearings, gangland murders, the establishment of home rule and the inside story of Marion Barry’s enigmatic dynasty and disgrace. Now their afterword narrates the District’s transformation in the last twenty years. New residents have helped bring developments, restaurants, and businesses to reviving neighborhoods. The authors cover the rise and fall of Mayors Adrian Fenty and Vince Gray, how new corruption charges are taking down politicians and businessmen, and how a fading Barry is still a player. The “city behind the monuments” remains flawed and polarized, but its revival is turning it into a distinct world capital—almost a dream city. Harry Jaffe has been a national editor at The Washingtonian magazine since 1990. He has received a number of awards for investigative journalism and feature writing from the Society of Professional Journalists. He has taught journalism at Georgetown University and American University. His work has appeared in Esquire, Regardie's, Outside, Philadelphia Magazine, National Geographic Traveler, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, and other newspapers. Jaffe was born and raised in Philadelphia and began his journalism career with the Rutland (Vermont) Herald. He is the co-author of Dream City: Race, Power and the Decline of Washington, D.C. He lives in Clarke County, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., with his wife and daughters. Tom Sherwood is a reporter for NBC4 in Washington, specializing in politics and the District of Columbia government. Tom also is a commentator for WAMU 88.5 public radio and a columnist for the Current Newspapers. Tom has twice been honored as one of the Top 50 Journalists in Washington by Washingtonian magazine. He began his journalism career at The Atlanta Constitution and covered local and national politics for The Washington Post from 1979 to 1989. He is the co-author of Dream City: Race, Power and the Decline of Washington, D.C. A native of Atlanta, he currently resides in Washington, D.C. and has one son, Peyton.

Tracing two centuries of rise, fall, and rebirth in the heart of downtown Detroit. Downtown Detroit is in the midst of an astonishing rebirth. Its sidewalks have become a dreamland for an aspiring creative class, filled with shoppers, office workers, and restaurant-goers. Cranes dot the skyline, replacing the wrecking balls seen there only a few years ago. But venture a few blocks in any direction and this liveliness gives way to urban blight, a nightmare cityscape of crumbling concrete, barbed wire, and debris. In Dream City, urban designer Conrad Kickert examines the paradoxes of Detroit's landscape of extremes, arguing that the current reinvention of downtown is the expression of two centuries of Detroiters' conflicting hopes and dreams. Kickert demonstrates the materialization of these dreams with a series of detailed original morphological maps that trace downtown's rise, fall, and rebirth. Kickert writes that downtown Detroit has always been different from other neighborhoods; it grew faster than other parts of the city, and it declined differently, forced to reinvent itself again and again. Downtown has been in constant battle with its own offspring—the automobile and the suburbs the automobile enabled—and modernized itself though parking attrition and land consolidation. Dream City is populated by a varied cast of downtown power players, from a 1920s parking lot baron to the pizza tycoon family and mortgage billionaire who control downtown's fate today. Even the most renowned planners and designers have consistently yielded to those with power, land, and finances to shape downtown. Kickert thus finds rhyme and rhythm in downtown's contemporary cacophony. Kickert argues that Detroit's case is extreme but not unique; many other American cities have seen a similar decline—and many others may see a similar revitalization.

Located at the edge of a continent and at the corresponding edge of national public consciousness, Vancouver has developed in unique and unanticipated ways. It is now emerging as an experiment in contemporary city-making, with international interest in Vancouver as a model of post-industrial urbanism increasing exponentially. Lance Berelowitz explores the links between the city's seductive natural setting, its turbulent political history and changing civic values, and its planning and design culture. He also makes the startling case that Vancouver is to Canada's imagination what Los Angeles is to the American -- a mythologized place of endless possibilities, while being grounded in an altogether more limited set of socio-economic and environmental limitations. Dream City is richly illustrated with both historical and contemporary photographs of many significant buildings and public spaces, as well as specially commissioned maps that reveal the underlying patterns of growth and change of Canada's youngest metropolis.

Vivid stories from a Canadian literary icon, who shares a life spread across continents and immersed in books. It's the life that many young women dream of: education in some of Europe's most beautiful cities before becoming a novelist, essayist, translator and literary curator. But the start of Linda Leith's journey is anything but idyllic. The daughter of a glamorous mother and a charming left-wing doctor, she is never told of her father's psychiatric breakdown or his subsequent shock therapy for what was then called manic depression. As this secret festers, Leith's father uproots the family to various European cities as he reinvents himself as a corporate executive, eventually moving across the Atlantic to Montreal. It's there, in her first year of university, that Leith is inspired by Madame de Staël: a writer and salonnière, banished from Paris by Napoleon himself. With none of Staël's advantages--no wealth, no social status, no château on Lake Geneva--Leith can scarcely imagine a salon, but she is drawn to Paris, and dreams of becoming a writer. This dream fuels her education in London, her marriage and writing in Budapest, and--finally--her journey back to Montreal where she meets a community of writers and readers who she works with to transform the city's literary scene. As Leith publishes, translates, and curates, she also comes to terms with her troubled father and the secrets of her childhood. A luscious read, this book will rivet readers of Jill Ker Conway's The Road from Coorain and Tara Westover's Educated , or anyone who has dreamed of building a cultural life.

Born and raised in Australia, Martha longs to return to Nadwodom, in a country called Czawa, where her parents and family grew up. As she stumbles upon the works of Marion Porter, an Australian photographer who once photographed the countryside in Czawa, Martha's own journey to her family's homeland begins to unfurl. There, she meets her cousin, Klara, and the two discover an uncanny relationship in which each sees herself in the other. Born and raised in Nadwodom, Klara helps Martha discover the multi-layered pattern that connects her present world and the history of a city that remains deep in the shadows of their family's memories. In moving across time and borders, Martha gradually recognizes the source of her yearning and the connections between the dreams and images that haunt her. Monica Raszewski's The Archaeology of a Dream City is a novel that explores the importance of remembering our histories and uncovering what has been lost. It is a story of the need to create, and a story of love that can only be lived when the past has been excavated. Jane Brown's poetic photographs accompany the author's evocative prose throughout the novel. "Beguiling and compelling, The Archaeology of a Dream City is all the more moving for the subtlety and tact of its beautifully decanted writing, rare qualities that are sure, in turn, to haunt its readers." - Marion May Campbell, fiction writer and poet

Traub relates the daily struggles of men and women trying to gain an education against the odds at the City College of New York, telling the story of the college's difficult present against the backdrop of its 150-year history. Students battle the cultural and economic forces that perpetuate inner-city poverty while the college that produced eight Nobel Laureates now tries to prepare survivors of the public school system for college-level work. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The stand-along plot of this novel brings a critical new piece to the "Babylon 5" story line. Haunted by the explosive fate of Babylons 1 through 4, the inhabitants of Babylon 5 work together to make the station "our last, best hope for peace".