A fascinating, well-researched tale of 21st-century urbanism set in Toronto.
Cohen’s debut nonfiction work chronicles a Toronto housing project’s makeover.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Cabbagetown South was home to some of Toronto’s poorest slums. In the 1940s, these slums were razed and replaced by a 69-acre public housing complex named Regent Park. The crime and poverty that afflicted the original site soon came to affect the new housing project, and in the early 21st century, a new plan was created to redevelop Regent Park as a mixed-use, mixed-income community. Cohen, a real estate developer and musician, was part of the team tasked with reenvisioning the neighborhood in a way that would work for both newcomers and long-time residents—who, temporarily displaced by the plan, were promised the right to return. “There were moments when we had no idea where the music would take us,” writes Cohen. “There were others in which the notes resonated in perfect harmony, reflecting hope, potential, and personal growth. Darker tones often took centre stage, reflecting anger, resentment, and a deep sadness for what had been lost.” This book records Cohen’s memories of the project, which spanned 18 years and three phases of revitalization. From creating pedestrian-friendly streets and new green spaces to fostering new economic and cultural energy, all while collaborating with residents and preserving the century-old history of the neighborhood, Cohen and his colleagues had their work cut out for them. The author writes in bubbly, problem-solving prose, outlining the peculiar challenges of designing a neighborhood to meet the needs of its many residents. Here, he describes when two locals wanted to start a cricket team. “There was, however, one small problem: there was no place to play cricket in Regent Park. Their practices and games were in eastern Scarborough—three bus and streetcar transfers away.” (Athletic fields were eventually installed.) Fans of urban planning and social housing policy will particularly enjoy this work, which includes many wonderful architectural illustrations and photographs. Given the length and the success of the project, this accessible in-depth account of how it came about is a great resource.
A fascinating, well-researched tale of 21st-century urbanism set in Toronto.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2024
ISBN: 9781774585054
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Page Two
Review Posted Online: Nov. 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.
An Egyptian Canadian journalist writes searchingly of this time of war.
“Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself: all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power.” So writes El Akkad, who goes on to state that one of the demands of modern power is that those subject to it must imagine that some group of people somewhere are not fully human. El Akkad’s pointed example is Gaza, the current destruction of which, he writes, is causing millions of people around the world to examine the supposedly rules-governed, democratic West and declare, “I want nothing to do with this.” El Akkad, author of the novel American War (2017), discerns hypocrisy and racism in the West’s defense of Ukraine and what he views as indifference toward the Palestinian people. No stranger to war zones himself—El Akkad was a correspondent in Afghanistan and Iraq—he writes with grim matter-of-factness about murdered children, famine, and the deliberate targeting of civilians. With no love for Zionism lost, he offers an equally harsh critique of Hamas, yet another one of the “entities obsessed with violence as an ethos, brutal in their treatment of minority groups who in their view should not exist, and self-decreed to be the true protectors of an entire religion.” Taking a global view, El Akkad, who lives in the U.S., finds almost every government and society wanting, and not least those, he says, that turn away and pretend not to know, behavior that we’ve seen before and that, in the spirit of his title, will one day be explained away until, in the end, it comes down to “a quiet unheard reckoning in the winter of life between the one who said nothing, did nothing, and their own soul.”
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593804148
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
