San Antonio College Library

For many, "going back to the land" brings to mind the 1960s and 1970s-hippie communes and the Summer of Love. More recently, the movement has reemerged in a new enthusiasm for locally produced food and more sustainable energy paths. This book explores this recurring impulse.

Many books have told the epic story of the black migration from the South, a migration that by the 1970s had all but stopped. Instead, one by one African Americans began returning to some of the least promising places, places the Department of Agriculture calls "persistent poverty counties." In Call to Home, Carol Stack tells us why. Here are the stories of people trading their apartments in the city for trailers, old cabins, or brick houses built...

"By 2030, China's cities will be home to 1 billion people one in every eight people on earth. What kind of lives will China's urban billion lead? And what will China's cities be like? Over the past thirty years, China's urban population expanded by 500 million people, and is on track to swell by a further 300 million by 2030. Hundreds of millions of these new urban residents are rural migrants, who lead second-class lives without access to urban benefits....