Crisis Cities

When the news broke in 1975 that New York City was on the brink of fiscal collapse, few believed it was possible. How could the country's largest metropolis fail? How could the capital of the financial world go bankrupt? Yet the city was indeed billions of dollars in the red, with no way to pay back its debts. Bankers and politicians alike seized upon the situation as evidence that social liberalism, which New York famously exemplified, was unworkable.

Tragedy unfolded on April 19, 1995, when a massive bomb exploded in America's Heartland, killing 168 people, including fifteen children. History says the Oklahoma City bombing was lone wolf terrorism. But haunting fresh evidence points instead to a neo-Nazi plot in which the FBI played a hidden role. The FBI launched the biggest manhunt in its history for two suspected bombers. Yet they never captured the other suspect, known only as John Doe 2, who rode next to McVeigh in the bomb truck. Soon, the FBI canceled the search, saying eyewitnesses who saw John Doe 2 were mistaken.

As an educator and avid learner, I set out to understand the complex issue of homelessness in America. After watching hundreds of interviews with people living on the streets, I wrote this book to share their stories and perspectives. Across twenty heartfelt chapters, you will meet individuals like Bruce, a lawyer-turned-beggar in D.C.; Penny, a young woman selling her body for drug money in Detroit; and James, an entrepreneur in Columbus still holding onto hope. Each person describes in their own words how they wound up homeless, whether through job loss, addiction, childhood trauma, lack ...

A NEW YORK TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR (SO FAR) A BOOKPAGE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR Through the “revelatory and gut-wrenching” (Associated Press) stories of five Atlanta families, this landmark work of journalism exposes a new and troubling trend—the dramatic rise of the working...

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK The dramatic story of the Flint water crisis, by a relentless physician who stood up to power. “Stirring . . . [a] blueprint for all those who believe . . . that ‘the world . . . should be full of people raising their voices.’”—The New York Times...

In recent years the young, educated, and affluent have surged back into cities, reversing decades of suburban flight and urban decline. And yet all is not well, Richard Florida argues in The New Urban Crisis. Florida demonstrates how the same forces that power the growth of the world's superstar cities also generate their vexing challenges: gentrification, unaffordability, segregation, and inequality.

A Fox News analyst and well-known commentator on urban violence examines the rise in crime affecting American cities and tells how it has personally affected families, including his own. On June 24, 2022, Gianno Caldwell’s eighteen-year-old brother, Christian, was murdered. He was standing...

Within hours of the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, the FBI had evidence pointing to Islamic extremists. But incredibly, federal authorities quickly squelched all investigations implicating Middle Eastern suspects. Here, award-winning investigative reporter Jayna Davis shares a gripping and intensely personal account of her arrival on the scene 13 minutes after the blast, the worldwide search for suspects, and the abrupt abandonment of the manhunt for John Doe #2.

Secret operations, corruption, crime, and a city teeming with spies: why Miami was as crucial to winning the Cold War as Washington DC or Moscow. The Cuban Missile Crisis was perhaps the most dramatic and dangerous period of the Cold War. What's less well known is that the city of Miami, mere...

Greedy Bastards tells the story of Sheryl and her new team’s uphill battle to turn around San Antonio city government. She takes you behind closed doors to share the hard changes she made and the strategies she used to create mutually beneficial solutions to the city’s biggest problems. Many of the issues Sheryl found in San Antonio are present in cities across the US. Packed with wins and losses, lessons learned, and pitfalls encountered, Greedy Bastards is a guidebook for any city official tasked with turning around a struggling city.

Winner of The Hillman Prize for Book Journalism - 2019 When the people of Flint, Michigan, turned on their faucets in April 2014, the water pouring out was poisoned with lead and other toxins. Through a series of disastrous decisions, the state government had switched the city’s water supply...

Olivia Strauss is turning thirty-nine. No major milestone. She still considers herself young. At least young enough to assume she has decades (emphasis on the plural) to check the unchecked boxes of her life’s to-do list. Ballerina? Too late. But not too late for poet. Or for reigniting the romantic spark in her marriage, spending more quality time with her son, switching careers, learning to cook, or even dyeing her hair a bright bohemian pink. She’ll get to that one. There’s time—until Olivia’s best friend, Marian, gives her a birthday present she could have lived without.

In a citywide crisis, visibility is a liability. The people who make it through are not always the strongest or the most prepared. They are the ones who stay quiet, think ahead, and know how to disappear when things turn chaotic. Low Profile: Urban Survival Tactics is your essential field guide to staying safe, sharp, and unnoticed during any urban emergency. This book teaches you how to blend in, avoid panic, and protect yourself when the power is out, the streets are dangerous, and help is nowhere nearby. You will learn how to: Use the gray man approach to move through cities without ...

Three years after the Monster Massacre, members of Rebecca’s old wolf pack have begun to go missing without a trace. The world has undergone many changes in the years since monsters came out of the shadows. An anti-monster group known as the Black Hand has started to organize across the United States. In response, pro-monster organizations have been growing in numbers and militancy. Targeted killings of suspected monsters and their allies, monsters spirited away in the dead of night, and the beginnings of pro-monster legislation are all signs of a cosmic shift on the horizon.

From the Tsarnaev brothers' years leading up to the act of terror to the bomb scene itself (which both authors witnessed firsthand within minutes of the blast), from the terrifying police shootout with the suspects to the ultimate capture of the younger brother, Boston Strong: A City's Triumph over Tragedy reports all the facts--and so much more.

2020 Audie Awards Finalist - Young Adult Stonewall Honor Book * A Time Magazine Best YA Book of All Time ""A book for warriors, divas, artists, queens, individuals, activists, trend setters, and anyone searching for the courage to be themselves.”—Mackenzi Lee, New York Times...

Chicago is a world-class city, but it is also a city in crisis. Crime is up, schools have repeatedly shut down due to conflict between City Hall and the powerful teachers' union, and COVID-19 only deepened the entrenched poverty, institutional racism, and endless tug of war between the city's haves and have nots. For four years, the person at the center of this storm was Lori Lightfoot.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, and the American Book Award, the best-selling Common Ground is much more than the story of the busing crisis in Boston as told through the experiences of three families. As Studs Terkel remarked, it's "gripping, indelible...a truth about all large American cities."

A través de una amplia investigación hemerográfica, así como una buena cantidad de entrevistas con personajes clave dentro y fuera de los gobiernos capitalinos, Alejandro Almazán -tres veces ganador del Premio Nacional de Periodismo- hace un recuento a lo largo de las administraciones de las principales crisis políticas -las más mediáticas y algunas desconocidas- que han marcado el rumbo de la ciudad desde 1997.

This program is read by actor, singer, and dancer Jelani Alladin, who originated the role of Kristoff in Broadway's Frozen musical. A fierce and riveting queer coming-of-age story following the personal and political awakening of a young gay Black man in 1980s New York City, from the television...