Cultural Literature

Students will learn that small actions can make a big difference! This nonfiction book explains why civic duties are important and how to fulfill them. The book includes a glossary and a short fiction piece related to the topic. With examples of heroes...

A sweeping history of American cities and towns, and the utopian aspirations that shaped them, by one of America's leading urban planners and scholars. The first European settlers saw America as a paradise regained. The continent seemed to offer a...

Finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Named a Best of Book of the Year by The Economist and Foreign AffairsLos Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist The Dadaab refugee camp is many things: to the charity workers, it's a humanitarian crisis; to the...

A majestic one-hundred-year study of segregation in Los AngelesCity of Segregation documents one hundred years of struggle against the enforced separation of racial groups through property markets, constructions of community, and the growth of...

This new edition of the visionary social history of Los Angeles is "as central to the L.A. canon as anything that . . . Joan Didion wrote in the seventies" (New Yorker) No metropolis has been more loved or more hated. To its official boosters, "Los...

An engaging account of the uniquely creative spirit and bustling cultural ecology of contemporary Los Angeles How did Los Angeles start the 20th century as a dusty frontier town and end up a century later as one of the globe's supercities - with...

Forty-two chapters comprise Hillman's writings on the psychology of public affairs: urbanism, environmental aesthetics, citizenship, and politics.

A dramatic narrative account of the life of William Juneboy Outlaw III, whose journey from housing-project youth to ruthless gangland kingpin to change-making community advocate represents a vital next chapter in the ongoing conversation about race and...

Why are cities centers of power? A sociological analysis of urban politics In this brilliant, very original survey of the politics and meanings of urban landscapes, leading sociologist Göran Therborn offers a tour of the world's major capital cities,...

Mario Carpo provides a subtle and insightful discussion of the intellectual structures that guide architectural composition and the ways that these structures were transformed by the historic shifts from script to print and from hand-made drawings to...

Fascinating images of Cincinnati's African-American heritage.Located on the banks of the Ohio River, Cincinnati was incorporated as a town in 1802. It became a major stop on the Underground Railroad and the gateway to the North for th