Accompanying CD-ROM includes ... "a 10-minute narrated video tour of the garden court."--Page [4] of portfolio.

A Financial Times Best Book of the Year A Guardian Best Architecture Book of the Year “Sharp, revealing, funny.” —The Guardian “An original and even occasionally hilarious book about losing ideals and finding them again... [De Graaf] deftly shows that architecture cannot be better or more pure than the flawed humans who make it.” —The Economist Architecture, we like to believe, is an elevated art form that shapes the world as it pleases. Four Walls and a Roof turns this fiction on its head, offering a candid account of what it’s really like to work as an architect. Drawing on his own tragicomic experiences in the field, Reinier de Graaf reveals the world of contemporary architecture in vivid snapshots: from the corridors of wealth in London, Moscow, and Dubai to the demolished hopes of postwar social housing in New York and St. Louis. We meet ambitious oligarchs, developers for whom architecture is nothing more than an investment, and layers of bureaucrats, consultants, and mysterious hangers-on who lie between any architect’s idea and the chance of its execution. “This is a book about power, money and influence, and architecture’s complete lack of any of them... Witty, insightful and funny, it is a (sometimes painful) dissection of a profession that thinks it is still in control.” —Financial Times “This is the most stimulating book on architecture and its practice that I have read for years.” —Architects’ Journal

“Reynolds gives us a much-needed reason for hope. The gardener, the conservationist, the city planner, and the nature lover will all be inspired for this wonderful book shows how thousands of even small wildlife friendly gardens can provide habitat for embattled wildlife around the world.” —Jane Goodall, Phd, DBE, Founder of the Jane Goodall Institute & UN Messenger of Peace Individuals can’t save the world alone. But if millions of us work together to save our own patch of earth—then we really have a shot. How do we do it? With Acts of Restorative Kindness (ARK). An ARK is a restored, native ecosystem. It’s a thriving patch of native plants and creatures that have been allowed and supported to re-establish in the earth's intelligent, successional process of natural restoration. Over time, this becomes a pantry and a habitat for our pollinators and wild creatures who are in desperate need of support. These ARKs will become the seeding grounds for our planet’s new story. They will be sanctuaries for our shared kin—the rooted and unrooted—and safe havens for the magic and abundance of the natural world. Most importantly, the ARK-building actions are within our control and laid out here in We Are the ARK. In these inspiring pages, discover how one person’s actions can effect big change in this world. Even the tiniest postage stamp patch of land matters! Together we are building a patchwork quilt of life that will wrap its way around this planet.

Introduction : the tough question -- The rose's sharp thorn : Texas and the rise of unauthorized immigrant education activism -- "A subclass of illiterates" : the presidential politics of unauthorized immigrant education -- "Heading into uncharted waters" : Congress, employer sanctions, and labor rights -- "A riverboat gamble" : the passage of employer sanctions -- "To reward the wrong way is not the American way" : welfare and the battle over immigrants' benefits -- From the border to the heartland : local immigration enforcement and immigrants' rights -- Epilogue

How is it that self-identified environmental progressives in America can oppose liberalizing immigration policies? Environmentalism is generally assumed to be a commitment of the political left and restrictionism a commitment of the right. As John Hultgren shows, the reality is significantly more complicated. American environmentalists have supported immigration restrictions since the movement first began in the late 1800s, and anti-immigration arguments continue to attract vocal adherents among contemporary mainstream and radical “greens.” Border Walls Gone Green seeks to explain these seemingly paradoxical commitments by examining what is actually going on in American debates over the environmental impacts of immigration. It makes the case that nature is increasingly being deployed as a form of “walling”—which enables restrictionists to subtly fortify territorial boundaries and identities without having to revert to cultural and racial logics that are unpalatable to the political left. From an environmental point of view, the location of borders makes little sense; the Mexican landscape near most border crossings looks exactly like the landscape on the American side. And the belief that immigrants are somehow using up the nation’s natural resources and thereby accelerating the degradation of the environment simply does not hold up to scrutiny. So, Hultgren finds, the well-intentioned efforts of environmentalists to “sustain” America are also sustaining the idea of the nation-state and in fact serving to reinforce exclusionary forms of political community. How, then, should socially conscious environmentalists proceed? Hultgren demonstrates that close attention to the realities of transnational migration can lead to a different brand of socio-ecological activism—one that could be our only chance to effectively confront the powerful forces producing ecological devastation and social injustice.