Book picks similar to
Small Change: About the Art of Practice and the Limits of Planning in Cities by Nabeel Hamdi
archurban
democracy
sustainable-goals
architecture
The Citizen's Constitution: An Annotated Guide
Seth Lipsky - 2009
But what if you want a delightfully quick, witty, and readable reference that, in one compact volume, places the document and its clauses into context? You're out of luck--until now. Written by Seth Lipsky, described in the Boston Globe as "a legendary figure in contemporary journalism," The Citizen's Constitution draws on the writings of the Founders, case law from our greatest judges, and current events in more than 300 illuminating annotations. Lipsky provides a no-nonsense, entertaining, and learned guide to the fundamental questions surrounding the document that governs how we govern our country. Every American should know the Constitution. Rarely has it glinted so brightly.
Rebuilding Coventry
Sue Townsend - 1988
The Coventry of the title is one Coventry Dakin, the novel's narrator, and a devoted, intelligent, but intensely bored wife and mother maintaining her dull husband and two nearly-grown children in suburban Midlands. Coventry also just killed her neighbor, a jerk named Gerald Fox who's been spreading nasty (and false) rumors about her. Now she's on the lam, and Townsend, author of the well-loved Adrian Mole series of books, takes us down and out on a comic excursion into London, where Coventry, now a penniless fugitive, seeks protection with both the lowest and highest levels of British society.
The London Scene: Five Essays
Virginia Woolf - 1975
Virginia Woolf was born and lived much of her life in the city, using it as the backdrop for many of her works. She was a fervent walker and her keen eye keeps pace as she strides across the city that she loved above all others. "The London Scene" begins in the docks of the east and flows against the Thames tide westwards, following the commercial pulse of the city from the disembarkment of goods at Tilbury to the crowds of shoppers on Oxford Street, before winding on majestically to the grand buildings of the City and Westminster. Virginia Woolf pauses to admire the splendour of St. Paul's and the austerity of Westminster Abbey. She visits the spartan houses of literary men, and concludes her walk with a wry look at the House of Commons. With specially commissioned illustrations by Suzanne Barton.
London
Edward Rutherfurd - 1997
He brings this vibrant city's long and noble history alive through the ever-shifting fortunes, fates, and intrigues of half-a-dozen families, from the age of Julius Caesar to the 20th century. Generation after generation, these families embody the passion, struggle, wealth, and verve of the greatest city in the world.
Urban Code: 100 Lessons for Understanding the City
Anne Mikoleit - 2011
Considering the urban landscape not from the abstract perspective of an urban planner but from the viewpoint of an attentive observer, Urban Code offers 100 "lessons"--maxims, observations, and bite-size truths, followed by short essays--that teach us how to read the city. This is a user's guide to the city, a primer of urban literacy, at the pedestrian level. The reader (like the observant city stroller) can move from "People walk in the sunshine" (lesson 1) to "Street vendors are positioned according to the path of the sun" (lesson 2); consider possible connections between the fact that "Locals and tourists use the streets at different times" (lesson 41) and "Tourists stand still when they're looking at something" (lesson 68); and weigh the apparent contradiction of lesson 73, "Nightlife hotspots increase pedestrian traffic" and lesson 74, "People are afraid of the dark."A lesson may seem self-evident ("Grocery stores are important local destinations"--of course they are!) but considered in the context of other lessons, it becomes part of a natural logic. With Urban Code, we learn what to notice if we want to understand the city. We learn to detect patterns in the relationships between people and the urban environment. Each lesson is accompanied by an icon-like image; in addition to these 100 drawings, thirty photographs of street scenes illustrate the text. The photographs are stills from films shot in the Manhattan neighborhood of SoHo; the lessons are inspired by the authors' observations of SoHo, but hold true for any cityscape.
The Heat of the Moment: Life and Death Decision-Making From a Firefighter
Sabrina Cohen-Hatton - 2019
A humbling, jaw-dropping read which redefines what is possible' Viv GroskopIn the face of urgency and uncertainty, would you respond analytically or trust your instincts? How would you decide who lives and who dies?Dr Sabrina Cohen-Hatton has been a firefighter for eighteen years. She decides which of her colleagues rush into a burning building and how they confront the blaze. She makes the call to evacuate if she believes the options have been exhausted or that the situation has escalated beyond hope. This is her astonishing account of a profession defined by the most difficult decisions imaginable.Taking us to the very heart of firefighting, Sabrina uses her award-winning research to reveal the skills that are essential to surviving – and even thriving – in such a fast-paced and emotionally-charged environment. And she immerses us in this extraordinary world; from scenes of devastation and crisis, through triumphs of bravery, to the quieter moments when she questions herself and the decisions made in the most unforgiving circumstances.Here is the truth about how we respond in our most extreme moments.'Gripping, heart-stopping and profoundly reassuring' Sue Black, author of 'All That Remains'
Lightning Bird: The Story of One Man's Journey Into Africa's Past
Lyall Watson - 1982
Atmospheres: Architectural Environments. Surrounding Objects
Peter Zumthor - 2006
Zumthor's passion is the creation of buildings that produce this kind of effect, but how can one actually set out to achieve it? In nine short, illustrated chapters framed as a process of self-observation, Peter Zumthor describes what he has on his mind as he sets about creating the atmosphere of his houses. Images of spaces and buildings that affect him are every bit as important as particular pieces of music or books that inspire him. From the composition and 'presence' of the materials to the handling of proportions and the effect of light, this poetics of architecture enables the reader to recapitulate what really matters in the process of house design.
Hobos, Hustlers, and Backsliders: Homeless in San Francisco
Teresa Gowan - 2010
Within a few years, however, what had been perceived as a national crisis came to be seen as a nuisance, with early sympathies for the plight of the homeless giving way to compassion fatigue and then condemnation. Debates around the problem of homelessness—often set in terms of sin, sickness, and the failure of the social system—have come to profoundly shape how homeless people survive and make sense of their plights. In Hobos, Hustlers, and Backsliders, Teresa Gowan vividly depicts the lives of homeless men in San Francisco and analyzes the influence of the homelessness industry on the streets, in the shelters, and on public policy. Gowan shows some of the diverse ways that men on the street in San Francisco struggle for survival, autonomy, and self-respect. Living for weeks at a time among homeless men—working side-by-side with them as they collected cans, bottles, and scrap metal; helping them set up camp; watching and listening as they panhandled and hawked newspapers; and accompanying them into soup kitchens, jails, welfare offices, and shelters—Gowan immersed herself in their routines, their personal stories, and their perspectives on life on the streets. She observes a wide range of survival techniques, from the illicit to the industrious, from drug dealing to dumpster diving. She also discovered that prevailing discussions about homelessness and its causes—homelessness as pathology, homelessness as moral failure, and homelessness as systemic failure—powerfully affect how homeless people see themselves and their ability to change their situation. Drawing on five years of fieldwork, this powerful ethnography of men living on the streets of the most liberal city in America, Hobos, Hustlers, and Backsliders, makes clear that the way we talk about issues of extreme poverty has real consequences for how we address this problem—and for the homeless themselves.
79 A.D. (Bachiyr Book 3)
David McAfee - 2015
One now roams the Spanish countryside, feeding on robbers and bandits, while the other hides in a cave on the slopes of Mt. Vesuvius, experimenting with his newfound powers. Neither has thought much about the other over the last eighteen years. But Baella, the ancient renegade, has plans for the pair, and her plans don’t involve letting the two live out their lives in relative peace. Through her treachery, they are reunited in Pompeii, but not even Baella can stop the coming cataclysm. Powerful forces are rising in the world of the Bachiyr, and Taras and Theron may find themselves caught up in something much bigger than they can imagine. That is, if either of them survive the mountain’s fiery anger.
The Establishment: And How They Get Away with It
Owen Jones - 2014
In exposing this shadowy and complex system that dominates our lives, Owen Jones sets out on a journey into the heart of our Establishment, from the lobbies of Westminster to the newsrooms, boardrooms and trading rooms of Fleet Street and the City. Exposing the revolving doors that link these worlds, and the vested interests that bind them together, Jones shows how, in claiming to work on our behalf, the people at the top are doing precisely the opposite. In fact, they represent the biggest threat to our democracy today - and it is time they were challenged.Owen Jones may have the face of a baby and the voice of George Formby but he is our generation's Orwell and we must cherish him (Russell Brand)This is the most important book on the real politics of the UK in my lifetime, and the only one you will ever need to read. You will be enlightened and angry (Irvine Welsh)Owen Jones displays a powerful combination of cool analysis and fiery anger in this dissection of the profoundly and sickeningly corrupt state that is present-day Britain. He is a fine writer, and this is a truly necessary book (Philip Pullman)
Unruly Places: Lost Spaces, Secret Cities, and Other Inscrutable Geographies
Alastair Bonnett - 2014
In Unruly Places, Alastair Bonnett goes to some of the most unexpected, offbeat places in the world to reinspire our geographical imagination.Bonnett’s remarkable tour includes moving villages, secret cities, no man’s lands, and floating islands. He explores places as disorienting as Sandy Island, an island included on maps until just two years ago despite the fact that it never existed. Or Sealand, an abandoned gun platform off the English coast that a British citizen claimed as his own sovereign nation, issuing passports and crowning his wife as a princess. Or Baarle, a patchwork of Dutch and Flemish enclaves where walking from the grocery store’s produce section to the meat counter can involve crossing national borders.An intrepid guide down the road much less traveled, Bonnett reveals that the most extraordinary places on earth might be hidden in plain sight, just around the corner from your apartment or underfoot on a wooded path. Perfect for urban explorers, wilderness ramblers, and armchair travelers struck by wanderlust, Unruly Places will change the way you see the places you inhabit.
SOA Design Patterns
Thomas Erl - 2008
More than three years in development and subjected to numerous industry reviews, the 85 patterns in this full-color book provide the most successful and proven design techniques to overcoming the most common and critical problems to achieving modern-day SOA. Through numerous examples, individually documented pattern profiles, and over 400 color illustrations, this book provides in-depth coverage of:• Patterns for the design, implementation, and governance of service inventories–collections of services representing individual service portfolios that can be independently modeled, designed, and evolved.• Patterns specific to service-level architecture which pertain to a wide range of design areas, including contract design, security, legacy encapsulation, reliability, scalability, and a variety of implementation and governance issues.• Service composition patterns that address the many aspects associated with combining services into aggregate distributed solutions, including topics such as runtime messaging and message design, inter-service security controls, and transformation.• Compound patterns (such as Enterprise Service Bus and Orchestration) and recommended pattern application sequences that establish foundational processes. The book begins by establishing SOA types that are referenced throughout the patterns and then form the basis of a final chapter that discusses the architectural impact of service-oriented computing in general. These chapters bookend the pattern catalog to provide a clear link between SOA design patterns, the strategic goals of service-oriented computing, different SOA types, and the service-orientation design paradigm.This book series is further supported by a series of resources sites, including soabooks.com, soaspecs.com, soapatterns.org, soamag.com, and soaposters.com.
Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St. Denis and Its Art Treasures
Abbot Suger - 1979
Gerda Panofsky-Soergel has updated the commentary in the light of new material, and the bibliography that she has prepared reflects the scholarship on St.-Denis in the last three decades. She has obtained some additional and more recent photographs, and the illustrations include a new ground plan and a new section of the chevet of the Abbey Church, both drawn under the supervision of Sumner McKnight Crosby.
The Glass Room
Simon Mawer - 2009
But, when the storm clouds of WW2 gather, the family must flee, accompanied by Viktor's lover and her child. But the house's story is far from over, as it passes from hand to hand, from Czech to Russian.