San Antonio College Library

Here is a surprising photographic survey of communal life in the American West from 1870 to the present. Many of the nearly three hundred photographs assembled here have never before been published. Some were discovered by Paul Kagan among the remains of vanished communities. Others, taken by Kagan himself, depict the present-day ruins of once thriving communes. The communities that these photographs and the accompanying text bring so vividly to life...

Contains one hundred lessons, maxims, photos, and observations of the urban lifestyle. Cities speak, and this little book helps us understand their language. 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 users guide...

"The Architecture of Change: Building a Better World is a collection of articles that demonstrates the power of the human spirit to transform the environments in which we live using equity, creativity, and ingenuity. This inspiring book profiles people from all walks of life, of all ages, from every socioeconomic group who refused to accept that things couldn't change, who saw the possibility of making something better and didn't hesitate to act....

Berlin in 1900 attracted writers, artists, and filmmakers whose fascination with the city manufactured an elaborate urban culture that insinuated itself into the most casual metropolitan encounters. The newspapers' daily versions fabricated Berlin into a sensational place, transforming city dwellers into flaneurs, browsers, and spectators. Paying more attention to the kaleidoscope of urban life than to singular world events, the print media reconstituted...

"In The Dallas Myth, Harvey J. Graff presents a novel interpretation of a city that has proudly declared its freedom from the past. He scrutinizes the city's origin myth and offers an explicit critique of the reactionary political foundations of modern Dallas: its tolerance for right-wing political violence, the endemic racism and xenophobia, and a planning model that privileges growth and monumental architecture at the expense of the environment...

"In The Manhattan Project, David Kishik dares to imagine a Walter Benjamin who did not commit suicide in 1940, but managed instead to escape the Nazis to begin a long, solitary life in New York. During his anonymous, posthumous existence, while he was haunting and haunted by his new city, Benjamin composed a sequel to his Arcades Project. Just as his incomplete masterpiece revolved around Paris, capital of the nineteenth century, this spectral text...

"The American dream of a single-family home on its own lot remains strong, but a different dream of living and prospering in a major city is beginning to take hold. After decades of abandonment by the middle class, a detectable wave of people is moving into urban downtown areas. The Intown Living phenomenon is generally powered by people under the age of 40 who are seeking more stimulation than that of a typical subdivision lifestyle. This book encourages...

Reveals the many ways in which religious groups actually embraced commercial culture to establish an urban presence. [back cover].

"The pioneer study in depth, now classic, of the day-by-day life of a typical, mid-continent American urban community at the quarter-century mark. In his Foreword, Clark Wissler calls it "a pioneer attempt to deal with a sample American community after the manner of social anthropology ... a contribution to history of the kind that is coming more and more into demand, a cross-section of the activities of a community to-day as projected from the background...