Reviews

If you have a book, film, or report that you would like us to consider reviewing, please contact us at articles@shelterforce.org. We cannot promise to review every item that we receive a review copy of. If you would like to be a reviewer, please contact us at articles@shelterforce.org with a brief description of your experience and what you are interested in reviewing.

The Local-Global Grassroots Connection

Unmaking Goliath: Community Control in the Face of Global Capital, by James DeFilippis. Routledge, 2004. 188 pp. $24.95 (paperback). Contours of Descent, by Robert Pollin. Verso, 2003. 238 pp. $21.00 (hardcover). Community-based movements for development and...

The Rebirth of Urbanism

City: Urbanism and Its End, by Douglas Rae. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003. 432 pp. $30.00 (hardcover). My reaction to Douglas Rae’s City: Urbanism And Its End was somewhat paradoxical. On the one...

Paradise Lost

When Public Housing Was Paradise: Building Community in Chicago, by J.S. Fuerst. University of Illinois Press. 2004. 264 pp. $20 (paperback). When the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) released its “Plan for Transformation” in...

Second Chances

Workforce Intermediaries for the Twenty-first Century, edited by Robert P. Giloth. Temple University Press in association with The American Assembly, Columbia University, Philadelphia, PA, 2004. 288 pp. $41.50 (hardcover). Workforce Development Politics: Civic Capacity...

The Rules of Engagement

A Voice for Nonprofits, by Jeffrey M. Berry with David F. Arons. Brookings Institution Press, 2003. 210 pp. $26.95 (hardcover). Jeffrey M. Berry and David F. Arons strongly believe that leaders of American...

The Joy (and Angst) of Organizing

Dynamics of Organizing: Building Power by Developing the Human Spirit, by Shel Trapp. (Self published.) 2003. 144 pp. $20 (paperback.) Available from the National Training and Information Center, 312-243-3035. There was a time...

Predatory Bender

Predatory Bender: A Story of Subprime Finance, by Matthew Lee. Inner City Press. 2004. 360 pp. $19.95 (paperback).www.atlasbooks.com or www.innercitypress.org/books.html. I have to admit, I approached Predatory Bender with low expectations about enjoying...

The Fortress of Solitude

The Fortress of Solitude, by Jonathan Lethem. Doubleday. 2003. 528 pp. $26 (hardcover). When I first read excerpts from Jonathan Lethem’s The Fortress of Solitude in The New Yorker last spring, I got...

Telling the Community Development Story

Comeback Cities, by Paul Grogan and Tony Proscio. Westview Press (www.westviewpress.com). 2000. 285 pp. $17 (paperback). House by House, Block by Block, by Alexander von Hoffman. Oxford University Press (www.oup.com). 2003. 320 pp. $30 (hardcover). If...

The Community Economic Development Handbook

The Community Economic Development Handbook: Strategies and Tools to Revitalize Your Neighborhood, by Mihailo Temali. Amherst H. Wilder Foundation (www.wilder.org). 2002. 288 pp. $35 (paperback).. As a community economic development professional for the past 25...

Community Control Without Tears

Organizing for Community Controlled Development: Renewing Civil Society, by Patricia Watkins Murphy and James V. Cunningham. Sage Publications. 2003. 360 pp. $42.95 (paperback). Reading Organizing for Community Controlled Development is like going...

At Home in a Changing World

Making a Place for Community: Local Democracy in a Global Era, by Thad Williamson, David Imbroscio and Gar Alperovitz. Taylor & Francis, Inc., 2003. 412 pp. $29.95 (Hardcover). For community development devotees interested in connecting...

How a City Was Changed Forever

City for Sale: The Transformation of San Francisco, by Chester Hartman with Sarah Carnochan. Revised and Updated Edition. University of California Press, 2002. 432 pp. $24.95 (Paperback) The San Francisco of 2003...

Review of Hands to Work: The Stories of Three Families Racing the Welfare Clock,...

Hands to Work: The Stories of Three Families Racing the Welfare Clock, by LynNell Hancock, William Morrow/HarperCollins, 2002. 320 pp. $13.95 (Paperback, available December 2002), $25.95 (Hardcover). In 1996, Congress passed and President Clinton signed...

Boom – The Sound of Eviction

Boom - The Sound of Eviction (96 minutes, 2002), a documentary directed by Francine Cavanaugh, A. Mark Liiv, and Adams Wood. Individuals $20 donation + $3 postage; institutions $200 + $3 postage. Whispered Media,...

Between Eminence & Notoriety: Four Decades of Radical Urban Planning

Between Eminence & Notoriety: Four Decades of Radical Urban Planning, by Chester Hartman, Center for Urban Policy Research, 2002. 405 pp. $29.95 (Paperback), $39.95 (Cloth). In her foreword to Chester Hartman’s newest book, Jane Jacobs...

The New Urban Leaders (by Joyce Ladner)

The New Urban Leaders, by Joyce Ladner. Brookings Institution Press, Washington D.C., 2001. 135 pp. $22.95. Kent Amos was an IBM executive who, with his wife, raised at-risk foster children at home. In the mid...

Place Matters (Dreier, Mollenkopf, Swanstrom)

Place Matters: Metropolitics for the Twenty-First Century, by Peter Dreier, John Mollenkopf and Todd Swanstrom. University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, 2001. 334 pp. This book represents another attempt to argue for a national urban...

Power, Race, and School Reform

The Color of School Reform: Race, Politics and the Challenge of Urban Education, by Jeffrey R. Henig, Richard C. Hula, Marion Orr, and Desiree S. Pedescleaux. Princeton University Press, 1999. 320 pp. $18.95, paper. There...

Weaving Storytelling and Theory

Renewing Hope Within Neighborhoods of Despair, by Herbert J. Rubin. State University of New York Press, Albany, NY. 2000. 280 pp. Herbert Rubin, a sociology professor from Northern Illinois University, spent over five years in...