Nobody writes like this.’ - Jonathan Jansen Why are South Africans so uncomfortable with deep disagreement? Why do we lash out at people with opposing views without taking the time to engage logically with their arguments? Eusebius McKaiser is on a mission to raise the level of debate in South Africa. He provokes us from our comfort zones and lures us into the debates that shape our opinions and our society. With surprising candour and intensely personal examples, McKaiser examines our deepest-felt prejudices and ingrained assumptions. Don’t expect to read this book and escape with your defences intact. Immensely readable and completely engaging, McKaiser tackles deeply South African questions of race, sexuality and culture, including: •Can blacks be racist? •Why is our society so violent? •Is it morally okay to be prejudiced against skinny lovers? •Why is the presidential penis so problematic? •Is unconditional love ever a good thing? •Is it necessary to search for a national identity?

    In this unparalleled book, Marshall Berman takes account of the social changes that swept millions of people into the capitalist world and the impact of modernism on art, literature and architecture. This new edition contains an updated preface addressing the critical role the onset of modernism played in popular democratic upheavals in the late 1920s.

    It discusses the Garden Cities movement and the suburban developments it generated, the German-Russian architectural experiments of the 1920s, the place of the avant-garde in the plastic arts, and the uses and pitfalls of seismological approaches to architecture, and assesses the prospects of socialist alternatives.

    So bright, she was blinded by the persistent and ever so charming, Issac Rosenberg. Unable to resist his charm, Somaya goes against her parents’ demands and dates him anyway. Years later, she’s deep into a relationship she can’t see herself escaping from. Everything that once glittered, has lost its shine, and the man she fell in love with is no longer the same. Will Somaya be able to flee her once fairytale lifestyle, or will it leave her scarred?

    

    Along the way we will walk unknown passageways, known only to the prophets of old, as we search for the true location of the lost temples of Solomon and Herod. We will also lift a candle into the dim recesses of history and uncover secrets about the Ark of the Covenant and the gold Mercy Seat's prophetic obligation as it relates to the future Millennial temple."

    Ng has a knack for making the familiar both fascinating and achingly funny. Three years after his bestselling début HONG KONG State of Mind, the razor-sharp observer returns with a sequel that is bigger and every bit as poignant.No City for Slow Men is a collection of 36 essays that examine some of the pressing social, cultural and existential issues facing Hong Kong. It takes us on a tour de force from the gravity-defying property market to the plunging depths of old age poverty, from the storied streets of Sheung Wan to the beckoning island of Cheung Chau, from the culture-shocked Western expat to the misunderstood Mainland Chinese and the disenfranchised foreign domestic worker. The result is a treatise on Hong Kong life that is thought-provoking, touching and immensely entertaining.Together with HONG KONG State of Mind (2010) and Umbrellas in Bloom (2016), (2010), No City For Slow Men forms Ng’s "Hong Kong Trilogy" that traces the city’s sociopolitical developments since its return to Chinese rule.

    Detroit, once the richest city in the nation, is now its poorest. Once the vanguard of America’s machine age—mass production, automobiles, and blue-collar jobs—Detroit is now America’s capital for unemployment, illiteracy, foreclosure, and dropouts. A city the size of San Francisco and Manhattan could neatly fit into Detroit’s vacant lots. In another life, Charlie LeDuff won the Pulitzer Prize reporting for The New York Times. But all that is behind him now, after returning to find his hometown in total freefall. Detroit is where his mother’s flower shop was firebombed; where his sister lost herself to drugs; where his brother works in a factory cleaning Chinese-manufactured screws so they can be repackaged as “Made in America.” With the steel-eyed reportage that has become his trademark—and the righteous indignation only a native son possesses—LeDuff sets out to uncover what destroyed his city. He embeds with a local fire brigade struggling to defend its neighborhood against systemic arson and bureaucratic corruption. He investigates state senators and career police officials, following the money to discover who benefits from Detroit’s decline. He befriends union organizers, homeless do-gooders, embattled businessmen, and struggling homeowners, all ordinary people holding the city together by sheer determination. Americans have hoped for decades that Detroit was an exception, an outlier. What LeDuff reveals is that Detroit is, once and for all, America’s city: It led us on the way up, and now it is leading us on the way down. Detroit can no longer be ignored because what happened there is happening out here. Redemption is thin on the ground in this ghost of a city, but Detroit: An American Autopsy is no hopeless parable. Instead, LeDuff shares a deeply human drama of colossal greed, ignorance, endurance, and courage. Detroit is an unbelievable story of a hard town in a rough time filled with some of the strangest and strongest people our country has to offer—and a black comic tale of the absurdity of American life in the twenty-first century.

    He’s amazing in every aspect and the definition of perfection in her eyes. Nothing can come between them; not even his ex Robin. But what happens when the person she least concerns herself with concocts a plan to destroy what her and Kenji built? Trying to gain the attention of a man who wants nothing to do with her, Lizzie decides to take matters in her own hands. The hunt is on for her because what she took from Kenji can never see the light of day; however, will he still feel the same when he comes face to face with the truth? Sade has returned to her nightmare and come to the conclusion, she’ll live out her last days with Kerron. He is still fighting relentlessly to keep her in his life no matter what the cost. But will he let her go once he realizes her love belongs to another man or will he result in doing the extreme to make sure no one will have her if he can’t? Rodney suffered a hate crime in the worst way imaginable. But is it really a hate crime if he knows who did it and why? Trying to keep the person a secret in hopes to get answers on why it happened will only lead him down the road to more devastation. His truth may be hidden now but once it’s revealed, other skeletons come tumbling out the closet and it will be up to him if he decides to stick around or pretend it never happened.

    A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History sketches the outlines of a renewed materialist philosophy of history in the tradition of Fernand Braudel, Gilles Deleuze, and Félix Guattari, while engaging — in an entirely unprecedented manner — the critical new understanding of material processes derived from the sciences of dynamics. Working against prevailing attitudes that see history merely as the arena of texts, discourses, ideologies, and metaphors, De Landa traces the concrete movements and interplays of matter and energy through human populations in the last millennium. The result is an entirely novel approach to the study of human societies and their always mobile, semi-stable forms, cities, economies, technologies, and languages.De Landa attacks three domains that have given shape to human societies: economics, biology, and linguistics. In each case, De Landa discloses the self-directed processes of matter and energy interacting with the whim and will of human history itself to form a panoramic vision of the West free of rigid teleology and naive notions of progress and, even more important, free of any deterministic source for its urban, institutional, and technological forms. The source of all concrete forms in the West’s history, rather, is shown to derive from internal morphogenetic capabilities that lie within the flow of matter—energy itself.A Swerve Edition.

    Author John Gallagher, who has covered urban redevelopment for the Detroit Free Press for two decades, spent a year researching what is going on in Detroit precisely because of its open space and the dire economic times we face. Instead of presenting another account of the city's decline, Reimagining Detroit: Opportunities for Redefining an American City showcases the innovative community-building work happening in the city and focuses on what else can be done to make Detroit leaner, greener, and more economically self-sufficient. Gallagher conducted numerous interviews, visited community projects, and took many of the photographs that accompany the text to uncover some of the strategies that are being used, and could be used in the future, to make twenty-first century Detroit a more sustainable and desirable place to live. Some of the topics Gallagher discusses are urban agriculture, restoring vacant lots, reconfiguring Detroit's overbuilt road network, and reestablishing some of the city's original natural landscape. He also investigates new models for governing the city and fostering a more entrepreneurial economy to ensure a more stable political and economic future. Along the way, Gallagher introduces readers to innovative projects that are already under way in the city and proposes other models for possible solutions-from as far away as Dresden, Germany, and Seoul, South Korea, and as close to home as Philadelphia and Youngstown-to complement current efforts. Ultimately, Gallagher helps to promote progressive ideas and the community leaders advancing them and offers guidance for other places dealing with the shrinking cities phenomenon. Readers interested in urban studies and environmental issues will enjoy the fresh perspective of Reimagining Detroit.

    In the second installment, Belly learns that Blaise is a far cry from the sit-by-the-phone women he's used to. His suave demeanor, charming ways, and calculated words fall on blind eyes and deaf ears when it comes to the heartbroken and now callous Blaise. However the ever so determined Belly is always up for a challenge. Meanwhile women of all kinds are still fawning over the young, handsome, and aggressive boxer, driving an even further wedge between the two lovers. Will Blaise cut her losses, leaving the trauma that is a relationship with Belly behind? Or will the unrelenting, and slightly off-kilter Belly be able to wear her down, making Blaise realize that once you go Belly, you can never go back. In part two, more lies are told, more backstabbing is done, more secrets are revealed, and the train on a path of jealousy and spite, has some new passengers. Additionally, in the world outside of Blaise and Belly, others will realize that the people you think you love, you may not really know them at all. And the one you believe isn't the one for you, may be exactly what you've been searching for.

    And he has boiled it down to one key factor: walkability. The very idea of a modern metropolis evokes visions of bustling sidewalks, vital mass transit, and a vibrant, pedestrian-friendly urban core. But in the typical American city, the car is still king, and downtown is a place that's easy to drive to but often not worth arriving at. Making walkability happen is relatively easy and cheap; seeing exactly what needs to be done is the trick. In this essential new book, Speck reveals the invisible workings of the city, how simple decisions have cascading effects, and how we can all make the right choices for our communities. Bursting with sharp observations and real-world examples, giving key insight into what urban planners actually do and how places can and do change, Walkable City lays out a practical, necessary, and eminently achievable vision of how to make our normal American cities great again.

    We are promised that apps, algorithms, and artificial intelligence will relieve congestion, restore democracy, prevent crime, and improve public services. In The Smart Enough City, Ben Green warns against seeing the city only through the lens of technology; taking an exclusively technical view of urban life will lead to cities that appear smart but under the surface are rife with injustice and inequality. He proposes instead that cities strive to be "smart enough" to embrace technology as a powerful tool when used in conjunction with other forms of social change--but not to value technology as an end in itself.In a technology-centric smart city, self-driving cars have the run of downtown and force out pedestrians, civic engagement is limited to requesting services through an app, police use algorithms to justify and perpetuate racist practices, and governments and private companies surveil public space to control behavior. Green describes smart city efforts gone wrong but also smart enough alternatives, attainable with the help of technology but not reducible to technology: a livable city, a democratic city, a just city, a responsible city, and an innovative city. By recognizing the complexity of urban life rather than merely seeing the city as something to optimize, these Smart Enough Cities successfully incorporate technology into a holistic vision of justice and equity.

    An occasionally humorous and insightful look into what makes socities both similar and unique.