As the world’s population has grown, our cities have burgeoned, and their impact on the environment worsened. Meanwhile, from the isolated, gated communities within Houston and Los Angeles, to the millions of residents of Bombay living in squalor, the city has failed to serve its ideal function—as the cradle of civilization, the engine of culture, and the inspiration for community and citizenship. In Cities for a Small Planet, Sir Richard Rogers, one of the world’s leading architects and the designer of the Pompidou Center in Paris, demonstrates how future cities could provide the springboard for restoring humanity’s harmony with its environment.Rogers outlines the disastrous impact cities have had and will continue to have on our world, from waste-saturated Tokyo Bay, to the massive plumes of pollution caused by London’s traffic, to the depleted water resources of Mexico City. He traces these problems to the underlying social and cultural values that create them—unchecked commercial zeal, selfish individualism, and a lack of community. Bringing to bear concepts such as that of “open-minded” space—places within cities that serve multiple functions such as markets, parks, and sidewalk cafes—he explains how urban design can be used to give citizens a sense of shared experience. The city built with comfortable and safe public space can bring diverse groups together and breed a sense of tolerance, awareness, identity, and mutual respect. He calls for a new theoretical shift in the way cities do business and interact with the environment, arguing that many products come to market and are sold without figuring their social or environmental cost.Rogers goes on to describe the city of the future: one that is sustainable within its own environment; that can make a positive impact on its surroundings; that encourages communication among its citizens; that is compact and focused around neighborhoods; and that is beautiful, a city whose buildings and spaces spark the creative potential of its inhabitants.As our population grows larger, our planet grows smaller. Cities for a Small Planet is a passionate and eloquent blueprint for the cities we must create in response, cities that provide for the needs of both their residents and the earth on which they live.

     Use These Powerful Meditation Secrets To Immediately Eliminate Stress And Anxiety Today! Read on your PC, Mac, smart phone, tablet or Kindle device. This book contains proven steps and strategies on how to meditate effectively to enjoy the benefits meditation has to offer. Experts have rightly described meditation as the ‘art of living’ owing to its ability to help you disengage from the autopilot mode, discover your true self, live a more loving and caring life, be present at all times, find the capacity to live your life more wisely, and deal with mental conditions such as depression, stress, and anxiety. Millions of people meditate for different reasons such as religion and therapy just to mention a few. Whether you choose to meditate for religious or therapeutic reasons, the truth remains that meditation can help change the way you generally approach life, the way you react to life's circumstances, and how you relate and interact with the people in your life. In this meditation guide for beginners, we shall discuss and understand everything you need to know about meditation before you start practicing it and how best to meditate to reap the amazing benefits meditation has to offer. Here Is A Preview Of What You'll Learn... Meditation: Why You Should Make It A Daily Habit General Guidelines For Effective Meditation How To Make Meditation A Habit How To Meditate To Overcome Depression Using Meditation For Stress Relief Using Meditation To Ease Anxiety And Much,Much More! Check Out What Others Are Saying... Simple and Informative "I liked this quick read and intro to meditation.This is a short read, and if you're interested in exploring what meditation has to offer you, this is a good place to start. The author provides a quick grounding in the history and the many benefits, and quickly moves on to the various types of meditation practice. There are many tips provided on how to give yourself a good chance of success in building a longlasting and beneficial habit. It's pretty basic information, but that is the intent. I wouldn't recommend it for readers who have studied the subject before (beginners is in the title after all), but it is a good introduction.." The author did an excellent job and also written very well " The author provides a quick grounding in the history and the many benefits, and quickly moves on to the various types of meditation practice. The author did an excellent job and also written very well. That's why I can understand the whole book very easily. I just willing to suggest all of you to read this book everyone who wants to know about that." Love this book! "I was eager to try meditation, as I heard about its benefits for both body and soul. That's why I got this book. I really enjoyed this book, I wasn't aware about most part of information I have read, especially on the various health benefits of meditation. I will definitely try to practice meditation with the help of this book.

    Each of its 365 perfectly sized little essays is meant to be read in bed at night after a long day’s work, either real or imagined, in the garden. A charming and mischievously funny companion to curl up with, Wright ranges comfortably—and lyrically—from giving gardening advice to meditating on such topics as antique collecting and travel, great literature and architecture. He is an addictive delight, as memorable describing the challenges of growing plume poppies as he is the simple pleasure of hanging up the dish towel once the housework is done. Written in language that is as timeless as it is seductive, The Gardener’s Bed-Book will appeal to gardening experts and armchair enthusiasts alike.This Modern Library edition is published with a new Introduction by Dominique Browning, the editor in chief of House & Garden and author of Around the House and in the Garden and the forthcoming Paths of Desire: The Passions of a Suburban Gardener.

    By seventeen, Jennifer leaves home and supports herself through her senior year of high school, graduating on-time with her class. But she has much more to prove. Determined, Jennifer kisses Colorado goodbye and sets off on a one-way trip to New York City.In the city, Jennifer hits the ground hustling, securing a job selling beepers on the street and singing for strangers every chance she gets. Not long after, she is discovered by a music producer on the A-train, records a demo, and signs her first record deal. However, Jennifer's budding career is interrupted by an unplanned pregnancy, destroying her odds in a male-dominated and cutthroat music industry. Unyielding, Jennifer persists for several years before landing a chance audition with platinum-selling producers, Full Force, who sign her.In the blink of an eye, Jennifer skyrockets from starving artist to New York City's best kept secret, songwriting for superstars and all but sealing her fate as a future household name. However, just as she is on the brink of fame to go with the small fortune she earns from publishing deals, an unexpected turn of events sets her on the rockiest road to dreams come true.Growing Up Between Stops on the A-train is the inspirational true story about how one woman discovered the secret to success and life happiness, the hard way.GUBSOTAT will be published in hardcover, paperback, eBook, and audio formats on November 7, 2019. Follow Jennifer Y. Johnson-Garcia on Facebook or @jyjohnsongarcia and @GUBSOTAT on Instagram to become an advanced reader or get a copy of the book sooner!

    It is a book for students, faculty, and everyone who engages in leadership for social change for a better world. It is an inspiring and liberating book in that it validates each one of us as we discover and practice the gifts we have been given." --Helen S. Astin, professor emerita of higher education and senior scholar, Higher Education Research Institute, UCLA"While simple schemes and models of leadership can have their appeal, the more challenging view proposed in Leadership for a Better World is not only more realistic but infinitely more fulfilling. This form of leadership calls us to look at our own deep yearnings and then respect those of others in the amazing global community of the twenty-first century." --Denny Roberts, assistant vice president for faculty and student services, Qatar Foundation"Positing that social change is at the heart of the leadership experience, Leadership for a Better World answers the question of 'leadership for what purpose?' Grounded in student experiences, this book includes student voices, stories, and contemporary case studies. Written in an informed and approachable tone, it provides a coherent set of guiding principles about how knowing oneself, meaningfully engaging with others, and adopting a systems perspective can promote the socially responsible leadership so needed in the world today." --Julie E. Owen, assistant professor, Leadership and Integrative Studies, George Mason University

    When various complications arise during the journey, Nate finds himself focusing closely on the characters around him for a bit of entertainment, but ends up getting more than he bargained for. The focal point of the story is Nate's seat-mate, a young man named Bud, whose extremely odd behavior catches the attention of everyone on the bus.

    In Urban Injustice, he explains in beautiful and simple language how the myth that the urban poor siphon off precious government resources is contradicted by the facts, and how most programs help some of the people some of the time but are almost never sufficiently orchestrated to enable people to escape the cycle of urban poverty. Hilfiker is able to present a surprising history of poverty programs since the New Deal, and shows that many of the biggest programs were extremely successful at attaining the goals set out for them. Even so, Hilfiker reveals, most of the best and biggest programs were "social insurance" programs, like Medicare and Social Security, that primarily assisted the middle class, not the poor. Whereas, "public assistance" programs, directed specifically towards the poor, were often extremely effective as far as they went, but were instituted with far less ambitious goals. In a book that is short, sweet, and completely without academic verboseness or pretension, Hilfiker makes a clear path through the complex history of societal poverty, the obvious weaknesses and surprising strengths of societal responses to poverty thus far, and offers an analysis of models of assistance from around the world that might perhaps assist us in making a better world for our children once we decide that is what we must do.

    He visits the Roman role in the way our roads are numbered, the ancient sat-nav systems of China of 2600BC and the unknown demonstrations against by-passes in the 1920s, and ends up at the roots of today's arguments about road pricing and road rage.Full of quirky nuggets of history, On Roads also celebrates the often overlooked people whose work we take for granted, such as Percy Shaw, the inventor of the catseye, Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert, the designers of the road sign system, and Charles Forte, the entrepreneur behind the service station.These stories of our past shed light on hidden changes in our society, the relation between people and nature and the invisibility of the mundane.And - on subjects ranging from speed limits to driving on the left, and the "non-places" where we stop to the unwritten laws of traffic jams - they have never been told together, until now.

    Based on the accounts of real event that took place in the year 2001, precisely the Royal Massacre, the novel tries to describe and explain the context and the background as well as the activity that took place before, during and after the monstrous act.The story is based on the conversation with a mother and daughter duo, who served as the maids to Queen Mother Ratna Rajya Laxmi and former queen Komal, respectively. To be on the safe side, the writer labeled the book as a novel, although everything written in it is true. He interviewed the ladies and cross examined their answers and descriptions with other palace and security officials.The book gives an account of series of events that took place before and during the massacre which is said to be masterminded by the then Crown Prince Dipendra because he has arguments and fight with his mother, the then queen Aishwarya. Although the people of Nepal and the world are made to believe that the massacre was masterminded by the then Crown Prince, the book suggests otherwise. It mentions that the Crown Prince was framed and the killing had continued even after the prince fell to the ground after he shot himself in chest. Also, the absence of firearms near his body points somewhere else. It also mentions what the Royal family members and their guests were doing when the tragedy struck.The book has revealed many secrets of the palace and the Royal families, not only of that in-fateful night but also those that had happened years ago during the times of King Mahendra as well as King Tribhuvan. It also explains the misdeeds of the previous kings, highlighting the negative aspects and part of the Nepali Royal Family.The novel was published some years after the massacre took place as the informant as well as the writer feared for their safety. Rakta Kunda by Krishna Abiral is a good read if you are curious about what had happened on that night in 2001, however, the mystery still looms and has not been solved although the book opens up many untold stories and accounts of the night.

    In this book, Denise D. Meringolo shows that the roots of public history actually reach back to the nineteenth century, when the federal government entered into the work of collecting and preserving the nation's natural and cultural resources. Scientists conducting research and gathering specimens became key figures in a broader effort to protect and interpret the nation's landscape. Their collaboration with entrepreneurs, academics, curators, and bureaucrats alike helped pave the way for other governmental initiatives, from the Smithsonian Institution to the parks and monuments today managed by the National Park Service.All of these developments included interpretive activities that shaped public understanding of the past. Yet it was not until the emergence of the education-oriented National Park Service history program in the 1920s and 1930s that public history found an institutional home that grounded professional practice simultaneously in the values of the emerging discipline and in government service. Even thereafter, tensions between administrators in Washington and practitioners on the ground at National Parks, monuments, and museums continued to define and redefine the scope and substance of the field. The process of definition persists to this day, according to Meringolo, as public historians establish a growing presence in major universities throughout the United States and abroad.

    His memoirs, originally scattered through his story collections, are among the most thrilling evocations of growing up in the New York of the 1950s and '60s—and of continuing to grow up, in the cultural turmoil of the '70s and '80s, as a writer, teacher, lover, and reader. The same honesty and excitement shine in Michaels's highly personal commentaries on culture and art. Whether he's asking what makes a story, reviewing the history of the word "relationship," or reflecting on sex in the movies, he is funny, penetrating, surprising, always alive on the page.The Essays of Leonard Michaels is the definitive collection of his nonfiction and shows, yet again, why Michaels was singled out for praise by fellow writers as diverse as Susan Sontag, Larry McMurtry, William Styron, and Charles Baxter. Beyond autobiography or criticism, it is the record of a sensibility and of a style that is unmatched in American letters.

    Designing with Plants is both inspirational and instructive-an informative and visually breathtaking study that shows readers how to create the same effects in their gardens. This paperback reprint includes four main parts. "Planting Palettes" shows the range of plant choice available in form, texture, and color. "Designing Schemes" shows how to combine these elements to create stunning and sculptural gardens. Through stunning photography, "Planting Moods" shows how to create a particular atmosphere. And "Year-Round Planting" emphasizes the importance of choosing plants that have value throughout the seasons.

    Deputy Mayor Daniel L. Doctoroff led New York's dramatic and unexpected economic resurgence after the September 11 terrorist attacks. With Mayor Michael Bloomberg, he developed a remarkably ambitious five-borough economic development plan to not only recover from the attacks but to completely transform New York's economy: New neighborhoods were created. Hundreds of thousands of jobs were generated. The largest municipal affordable housing plan in American history was completed. Ground Zero was rebuilt. And New York adopted a pathbreaking sustainability plan. None of this was straightforward. New York has some of the most entrenched financial and political interests anywhere, and it has a population that is quick to let its public officials know exactly what is on its mind. Doctoroff's plans for a New York Olympic Games and a stadium on the West Side crashed and burned, but phoenix-like he engineered the transformation of the city anyway.Greater than Ever is a bracing adventure--when can-do attitude dove headlong into New York's unique realpolitik of "fuggedaboutit" -- during which the city was changed for the better.

    Fields, farms, hills and hedgerows appear altered, the wildlife behaves differently, and over time the terrain itself is transformed.In Rain, Melissa Harrison explores our relationship with the weather as she follows the course of four rain showers, in four seasons, across Wicken Fen, Shropshire, the Darent Valley and Dartmoor.Blending these expeditions with reading, research, memory and imagination, she reveals how rain is not just an essential element of the world around us, but a key part of our own identity too.

    . .So begins Matthew Garth’s story of the fall of 1962, when the shooting of a young woman on Thanksgiving Day sets off a chain of unsettling events in Willow Falls, Minnesota. Matthew first sees Louisa Lindahl in Dr. Dunbar’s home office, and at the time her bullet wound makes nearly as strong an impression as her unclothed body. Fueled over the following weeks by his feverish longing for this mysterious woman—as well as by a deep desire for the comfort and affluence that appears to surround the Dunbars—Matthew finds himself drawn into a series of confrontations he never expected, the results of which will change his life irrevocably and give lie to his version of the American dream.Immersive, heartbreaking, and richly evocative of time and place, this long-awaited new novel marks the return of a great American storyteller.