In his inaugural address in 1993, President Clinton said: "I challenge a new generation of young Americans to a season of service to act on your idealism by helping troubled children, keeping company with those in need, reconnecting our torn communities." In the fall of 1990, Suzanne Goldsmith had signed on for her own "season of service" with City Year, the widely praised, Boston-based community service program frequently endorsed by political figures as a model for the nation. 'A City Year' is the story of Goldsmith's experience, an honest and gritty account of the triumphs and setbacks faced by an idealistic and experimental social program in its infancy. Together with a diverse team of young men and women--including a Burmese immigrant, a white prep-school graduate, a foster child, an ex-convict, and a black middle-class college student--Goldsmith helped renovate a building for the homeless, tutored school children, reclaimed a community garden from drug dealers, and organized a community street-cleaning day. The year Included backbreaking but gratifying work, the sense of family that comes from collaborative labor, and the potential strength of diversity. 'A City Year' is both the story of an uphill battle in urban America and an uplifting recipe for social change. As the AmeriCorps national service program dangles in the political wind on Capitol Hill, this book offers a true glimpse of what a "season of service" really means. It is a fascinating account for sociologists and all those with an interest in community service and youth.

In 2015, the beautiful jazz funeral in New Orleans for composer Allen Toussaint coincided with a debate over removing four Confederate monuments. Mayor Mitch Landrieu led the ceremony, attended by living legends of jazz, music aficionados, politicians, and everyday people. The scene captured the history and culture of the city in microcosm--a city legendary for its noisy, complicated, tradition-rich splendor. In City of a Million Dreams, Jason Berry delivers a character-driven history of New Orleans at its tricentennial. Chronicling cycles of invention, struggle, death, and rebirth, Berry reveals the city's survival as a triumph of diversity, its map-of-the-world neighborhoods marked by resilience despite hurricanes, epidemics, fires, and floods. Berry orchestrates a parade of vibrant personalities, from the founder Bienville, a warrior emblazoned with snake tattoos; to Governor William C. C. Claiborne, General Andrew Jackson, and Pere Antoine, an influential priest and secret agent of the Inquisition; Sister Gertrude Morgan, a street evangelist and visionary artist of the 1960s; and Michael White, the famous clarinetist who remade his life after losing everything in Hurricane Katrina. The textured profiles of this extraordinary cast furnish a dramatic narrative of the beloved city, famous the world over for mysterious rituals as people dance when they bury their dead.

"The foodie book of the year" The Spectator ''An inspiring book for city dwellers who pine for the bounty of a countryside hedgerow' Sunday Times 'The forager's magic trick; To conjure a meal out of seemingly nothing and ensure you never look the same way at a neglected green space again' Daily Telegraph 'I love the idea that I could pick up dinner from a local park rather than from a shop on the way home. A book about urban forging could so easily have been worthy, but it's an entertaining read with recipes: get ready for nettle tempura...' Delicious magazine 'A man after my own heart.' Mark Hix 'That is the final act of the forager's magic trick. To conjure a meal out of seemingly nothing, and ensure you never look the same way at a neglected green space again' The Telegraph Once you start foraging, you'll never look at the city around you in the same way again. As we walk through the city with our headphones in or our eyes glued to screens, it's easy to forget that we are surrounded by wonderful things to eat. Our parks, pathways, gardens and wild spaces are crammed full of delicious, nutrient-rich plants; all we need to know is how to find them. From dandelions to winter cress, wild garlic to chickweed and ground ivy to water mint, this book takes us through a year of delicious, foraged food. Each entry is illustrated in colour to help you identify the plant and followed by a recipe using these remarkable ingredients. In The Edible City, urban forager John Rensten gives us the tools to identify, source and cook delicious food from the year-long bounty around us, whether that's nettle and three-cornered leek gnocchi, winter purslane pesto, or stinging nettle tempura. This account of a year of urban foraging is perfect for any nature lover or home cook looking for exciting new ingredients to experiment with.

Charlotte Hobson spent her gap year as a student in Voronezh, in deepest provincial Russia. Her arrival coincided with the collapse of this society, as initial optimism about the fall of communism gave way to disillusionment and uncertainy. These feelings are mirrored in the doomed love affair she has with the vodka-swilling Mitya. They too started out in a mood of wild optimism, and felt that anything was possible. Until in the spring the snow thawed, and revealed the black earth beneath.

An illustrated love letter to the City of Light.

The classic work on the evaluation of city form. What does the city's form actually mean to the people who live there? What can the city planner do to make the city's image more vivid and memorable to the city dweller? To answer these questions, Mr. Lynch, supported by studies of Los Angeles, Boston, and Jersey City, formulates a new criterion—imageability—and shows its potential value as a guide for the building and rebuilding of cities. The wide scope of this study leads to an original and vital method for the evaluation of city form. The architect, the planner, and certainly the city dweller will all want to read this book.

This sweeping history of New York’s millions of immigrants, both famous and forgotten, is “told brilliantly [and] unforgettably” (The Boston Globe). Written by an acclaimed historian and including maps and photos, this is the story of the peoples who have come to New York for four centuries: an American story of millions of immigrants, hundreds of languages, and one great city. Growing from Peter Minuit’s tiny settlement of 1626 to a clamorous metropolis with more than three million immigrants today, the city has always been a magnet for transplants from around the globe. City of Dreams is the long-overdue, inspiring, and defining account of the young man from the Caribbean who relocated to New York and became a founding father; Russian-born Emma Goldman, who condoned the murder of American industrialists as a means of aiding downtrodden workers; Dominican immigrant Oscar de la Renta, who dressed first ladies from Jackie Kennedy to Michelle Obama; and so many more. Over ten years in the making, Tyler Anbinder’s story is one of innovators and artists, revolutionaries and rioters, staggering deprivation and soaring triumphs. In so many ways, today’s immigrants are just like those who came to America in centuries past—and their stories have never before been told with such breadth of scope, lavish research, and resounding spirit. “Anbinder is a master at taking a history with which many readers will be familiar—tenement houses, temperance societies, slums—and making it new, strange, and heartbreakingly vivid. The stories of individuals, including those of the entrepreneurial Steinway brothers and the tragic poet Pasquale D’Angelo, are undeniably compelling, but it’s Anbinder’s stunning image of New York as a true city of immigrants that captures the imagination.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)