This anthology explores Chicago’s surprisingly diverse wildlife through essays, poetry, paintings, and photographs. We usually think of cities as the domain of humans—but we are just one of thousands of species that call the urban landscape home. While Chicago residents are likely familiar with squirrels, pigeons, and dogs, many would be surprised to learn about the leafhoppers and water bears, black-crowned night herons and bison, beavers and massasauga rattlesnakes that are living alongside them. City Creatures introduces readers these and other creatures through a variety of creative contributions. Contributors bring a story-based approach to this urban safari, taking readers on birding expeditions to the Magic Hedge at Montrose Harbor on the North Side, canoe trips down the South Fork of the Chicago River (better known as Bubbly Creek), and insect-collecting forays or restoration work days in the suburban forest preserves. The book is organized into six sections, each highlighting one type of place in which people might encounter animals in the city and suburbs. For example, schoolyard chickens and warrior wasps populate “Backyard Diversity,” and a chorus of deep-freeze frogs awaits in “Water Worlds.” Its powerful combination of insightful narratives, numinous poetry, and full-color art will help readers see the city—and the creatures who share it with us—in an entirely new light.

Don’t Miss Poorly Drawn Lines on Cake, airing on FX and streaming on FX on Hulu! From New York Times bestselling author and artist Reza Farazmand, his first graphic novel about a young monster who moves to a big city. City Monster is set in a world of supernatural creatures and follows a young monster who moves to the city. As he struggles to figure out his future, his new life is interrupted by questions about his mysterious roommate—a ghost who can’t remember the past. Joined by their neighbor, a vampire named Kim, they explore the city, meeting a series of strange and spooky characters and looking for answers about life, memories, and where to get a good beer. With Reza's signature style, and familiar snark, this graphic novel is equal parts irreverent and insightful, the perfect vehicle for conveying the utter absurdity of our bizarre and confusing times.

This book presents interdisciplinary research to examine the ongoing debates around nonhuman animals in urban spaces. It explores how we can better appreciate and accommodate animals in the city, while also exploring the ecological, health, ethical, and cultural implications of the same. The book addresses seven interrelated themes such as blurred boundaries between the human and the nonhuman, the right of nonhuman species to the city, interactions between the human and nonhuman animals, the fabric of urban space, human and nonhuman complex systems, and collective welfare that forms the basis of a transspecies urban theory. It explains how a holistic understanding of the city requires that these blurred boundaries are acknowledged and critically examined. Chapters analytically consider the need to bring interspecies relationships to the fore to tackle questions of legitimacy and who has the "right" to the city. These also consider important intersections between the economic, political, social, and cultural aspects of the urban experience. The research contained in this book focuses on the development of an urban theory that would eradicate the divide between humans and other species in cities, and it depicts nonhuman animals as social actors that have voices within urban spaces. With global insights on human–animal relationships in a contemporary context, this book will be useful reading for scholars and students of urban studies, animal sciences, animal law, animals and public policy, anthropology, and environmental studies who are interested in the study of animals in cities.

In "Alex Goldburst and Animal Reiki," follow the enchanting journey of Alex Goldburst, a detective rabbit renowned for solving supernatural mysteries. Initiated into the ancient art of Reiki by Grand Masters Saurav Dash and Blaze Goldburst, Alex embarks on a mission to heal the suffering animals of a troubled city. As he delves into the transformative power of Reiki, Alex ignites a wave of spiritual awakening, guiding both animals and humans towards profound healing and connection. With each chapter, witness miraculous transformations and the ripple effect of compassion that transcends the boundaries of species. Join Alex on an unforgettable adventure, where the magic of Reiki intertwines with the mysteries of the cosmos, illuminating the path to harmony and well-being.

Why do America’s cities look the way they do? If we want to know the answer, we should start by looking at our relationship with animals. Americans once lived alongside animals. They raised them, worked them, ate them, and lived off their products. This was true not just in rural areas but also in cities, which were crowded with livestock and beasts of burden. But as urban areas grew in the nineteenth century, these relationships changed. Slaughterhouses, dairies, and hog ranches receded into suburbs and hinterlands. Milk and meat increasingly came from stores, while the family cow and pig gave way to the household pet. This great shift, Andrew Robichaud reveals, transformed people’s relationships with animals and nature and radically altered ideas about what it means to be human. As Animal City illustrates, these transformations in human and animal lives were not inevitable results of population growth but rather followed decades of social and political struggles. City officials sought to control urban animal populations and developed sweeping regulatory powers that ushered in new forms of urban life. Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals worked to enhance certain animals’ moral standing in law and culture, in turn inspiring new child welfare laws and spurring other wide-ranging reforms. The animal city is still with us today. The urban landscapes we inhabit are products of the transformations of the nineteenth century. From urban development to environmental inequality, our cities still bear the scars of the domestication of urban America.

What do animals—other than human animals—have to do with religion? How do our religious ideas about animals affect the lives of real animals in the world? How can we deepen our understanding of both animals and religion by considering them together? Animals and Religion explores how animals have crucially shaped how we understand ourselves, the other living beings around us, and our relationships with them. Through incisive analyses of religious examples from around the world, the original contributions to this volume demonstrate how animals have played key roles in every known religious tradition, whether as sacred beings, symbols, objects of concern, fellow creatures, or religious teachers. And through our religious imagination, ethics, and practices, we have deeply impacted animal lives, whether by domesticating, sacrificing, dominating, eating, refraining from eating, blessing, rescuing, releasing, commemorating, or contemplating them. Drawing primarily on perspectives from religious studies and Christian theology, augmented by cutting-edge work in anthropology, biology, philosophy, and psychology, Animals and Religion offers the reader a richer understanding of who animals are and who we humans are. Do animals have emotions? Do they think or use language? Are they persons? How we answer questions like these affects diverse aspects of religion that shape not only how we relate to other animals, but also how we perceive and misperceive each other along axes of gender, race, and (dis)ability. Accessibly written and thoughtfully argued, Animals and Religion will interest anyone who wants to learn more about animals, religion, and what it means to be a human animal.

We face two global threats: the climate crisis and a crisis of democracy. Located at the crux of these crises, sustainable cities build on the foundations and resources of democracy to make our increasingly urban world more resilient and just. Sustainable Cities in American Democracy focuses on this effort as it emerged and developed over the past decades in the institutional field of sustainable cities—a vital response to environmental degradation and climate change that is shaped by civic and democratic action. Carmen Sirianni shows how various kinds of civic associations and grassroots mobilizing figure in this story, especially as they began to explicitly link conservation to the future of our democracy and then develop sustainable cities as a democratic project. These organizations are national, local, or multitiered, from the League of Women Voters to the Natural Resources Defense Council to bicycle and watershed associations. Some challenge city government agencies contentiously, while others seek collaboration; many do both at some point. Sirianni uses a range of analytic approaches—from scholarly disciplines, policy design, urban governance, social movements, democratic theory, public administration, and planning—to understand how such diverse civic and professional associations have come to be both an ecology of organizations and a systemic and coherent project. The institutional field of sustainable cities has emerged with some core democratic norms and civic practices but also with many tensions and trade-offs that must be crafted and revised strategically in the face of new opportunities and persistent shortfalls. Sirianni’s account draws ambitious yet pragmatic and hopeful lessons for a “Civic Green New Deal”—a policy design for building sustainable and resilient cities on much more robust foundations in the decades ahead while also addressing democratic deficits in our polarized political culture.

The TV series that was never made and that youÕve never heard of celebrates its 40th year with an exhaustive retrospective guide! Growing from a child's game, the bizarrely-titled The Magnet Editor ran for ten years and a breathtaking 47 series. In bringing the series to life, Nick Goodman drew from 70s pop culture including Doctor Who and The New Avengers, and shared it only with his bewildered mother and childhood friends. Jo Bunsell was one such friend and soon the pair would be transported into a shared universe of preposterous Ð and badly designed Ð monsters and non-stop adventure with their extraordinary and strangely-named hero, Cabin Relese. Goodman and Bunsell open up their archive of materials and memories, and take you on a roller-coaster ride into their world! Magnet Memories is an episode guide, a frank, critical, incredulous and nostalgic reflection, a snapshot of childhood in the 70s and 80s... and it's possibly the most wonderfully bonkers cult TV book ever published!

Assemblages of poems, short stories and quotes written in the English language with Hindi and Arabic translations.