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mindfulness—then marries them
together in a series of memorization-worthy mantras (“How humble I am
determines how teachable I am”;
“Vulnerability is the greatest act of
courage”) on how to stop seeing difficulties as adversaries and view them as
opportunities for growth. At the conclusion of most chapters, Chan gives the
reader thoughtful yet pragmatic homework. She wraps up the book with step-by-step guidelines to creating a personal
action plan. Her openhearted tone
throughout conveys the sense of
someone so secure in her own skin that
she doesn’t feel the need to tear others
down. Her lessons will resonate with
readers long after the final page is turned.
(Oct.)
★ Extreme Cities: The Perils and Promise of
Urban Life in the Age of Climate Change
Ashley Dawson. Verso, $29.95 (384p) ISBN 978-1-78478-036-4
Dawson (Extinction: A Radical History), a professor of
English at CUNY, takes aim at the empty rhetoric of “green
cities” in this forcefully argued and eye-opening polemic.
The book’s locales are marked by “stark
economic inequality”—the growing gap
between those who can afford to insulate
themselves from the consequences of climate
change and those who cannot. Using New
York City as his primary case study, Dawson
argues that cities are both on the front lines
of climate change and contribute disproportionately to it.
Much-touted “fixes” to urban congestion and fragility, such
as waterfront development and privately developed afford-
able-housing projects, serve only to reinforce social and
economic inequalities while causing waves of what he dubs
“environmental blowback.” Moreover, rising sea levels
will likely also necessitate a retreat from coastal cities. For
Dawson, countering the threat of climate change must
involve dismantling the system of global capitalism that has
pushed civilization to the brink of “climate chaos.” The
book’s synthesis of reportage, urban history, and climate
science can result in the oversimplification of certain issues,
but Dawson doesn’t shy away from tough conclusions and
makes clear that real climate justice must build “on anti-
imperialist, antiracist, and feminist movements.” Dawson
makes a convincing case that, unless urban dwellers and civic
leaders engage in a fundamental reconceptualization of the
city and whom it serves, the future of urban life is dim. (Oct.)
Citymakers: The Culture and Craft of Practical
Urbanism
Cassim Shepard. Monacelli, $45 (296) ISBN 978-1-58093-485-5
Shepard, founding editor of the online publication Urban
Omnibus, presents readers with a rich view of the challenges of
and opportunities for sustainable “citymaking” in an era of
increasing economic inequality and destabilizing climate change.
Focusing specifically on New York City in the years following
the 2008 financial crisis, Shepard profiles a wide variety of
people, including housing advocates, gardeners, community
activists, and young entrepreneurs, who are
working behind the scenes to ensure a more
equitable and sustainable future for the city and
its residents. Through these examples, she
argues that the making and remaking of a city is
fundamentally a cooperative process that is most
successful when a given resource or project is
marshalled to serve the city’s inhabitants in flexible, multiva-
lent ways. For example, the group of scholars working for the
Dredge Research Collective garnered interest in new technolo-
gies in sedimentary infrastructure through boat tours open to
the public. Narrative footnotes, photographs, maps, and dia-
grams bring additional depth to the main text. The book offers
a passionate and informed plea for citizens at the local level to
recognize and invest in both daily and long-range projects that
support the urban environment. Color photos. (Sept.)
The Future City
Two books present visions for the future of urbanism.
Vacationland: True Stories from
Painful Beaches
John Hodgman. Viking, $25 (272p) ISBN 978-
0-7352-2480-3
Mild departures from the routine
inspire neurotic palpitations in these
dourly funny essays by humorist Hodgman
(The Areas of My Expertise), who pegs his
shaggy-dog stories to several unnerving
locales. One is around his second home in
rural Massachusetts, where he wrestles with
anxiety about taking his garbage to the
wrong town’s dump (the right dump is a
longer drive), gets high and builds witchy
cairns in a river, and fights a seesaw battle
against raccoon droppings on his property
and field mice in his kitchen. Other essays
concern his postcollege arrival in New
York, where he revels in sliding-scale-
priced therapy with a trainee psychologist
(“I could talk about jazz violin all day long
and she was professionally obligated to
listen thoughtfully and pretend to be inter-
ested”), and his horrifying Maine sojourns,
featuring taciturn locals, insufferable
summer people, and blighted confections
(“Fudge is repulsive... like a dark, impacted
colon blockage that a surgeon had to
remove”). Recurring themes include the
yearning for perpetual adolescence, the baf-
fling burdens of adulthood (“Homeowners
advice: do not put even a single box of stale
Cheerios down the garbage disposal, never
mind three”), and liberal self-loathing
(“There is no mansplaining like white
mansplaining”). Hodgman’s sketches
ramble a while and then peter out, but the
twists of mordant, off-kilter comedy make
for entertaining excursions. (Oct.)
