Light, Jennifer S. From Warfare to Welfare: Defense Intellectuals and Urban Problems in Cold War America. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003.

Jennifer Light argues that the technologies and values of the Cold War fundamentally shaped the history of postwar urban America. From Warfare to Welfare documents how American intellectuals, city leaders, and the federal government chose to attack problems in the nation's cities by borrowing techniques and technologies first designed for military engagement with foreign enemies. Experiments in urban problem solving adapted the expertise of defense professionals to face new threats: urban chaos, blight, and social unrest. Tracing the transfer of innovations from military to city planning and management, Light reveals how a continuing source of inspiration for American city administrators lay in the nation's preparations for war.

Baron, David. The Beast in the Garden: a Modern Parable of Man and Nature. New York: W. W. Norton, 2004.

When, in the late 1980s, residents of Boulder, Colorado, suddenly began to see mountain lions in their yards, it became clear that the cats had repopulated the land after decades of persecution. Here, in a riveting environmental fable, journalist David Baron traces the history of the mountain lion and chronicles Boulder's effort to coexist with its new neighbors. The author's website includes a guide for reading groups. Reviewed in May 2004 issue of Planning magazine.

Ryan, Mark A., ed. The Clean Water Act Handbook. 2nd ed. Chicago: American Bar Association, 2003.

With chapters written by 18 of the country's most knowledgeable experts on the CWA, this comprehensive book is a compilation of their experience in understanding this complex statute and its implementing regulations and guidelines. Every chapter has been significantly rewritten to reflect new judicial and regulatory interpretations.

McQueen, Mike, and Ed McMahon. Land Conservation Financing. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2003.

The authors present important new information on state-of-the-art conservation financing, showcasing programs in states that have become the nation's leaders in open-space protection: California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and New Jersey. They look at key local land protection efforts by examining model programs in DeKalb County, Georgia; Douglas County, Colorado; Jacksonville, Florida; Lake County, Illinois; Lancaster County, Pennsylvania; Marin County, California; the St. Louis metro area in Missouri and Illinois, and on Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

Stein, Jay M., ed. Classic Readings in Urban Planning. 2nd ed. Chicago: Planners Press, 2004.

This new edition of "the best anthology in planning" includes 33 selections by many of the profession's most respected thinkers and eloquent writers. Returning editor Jay M. Stein chose the articles — about half of them new to this edition — based on suggestions from colleagues and students who used the first edition, recommendations from planning scholars, awards for writing in the field of planning, and his own review of recent planning literature.

Osgood, Frank W. Region Aroused: Focusing on Ways to Make the Regional Process Work Better, 1999-2003. Pittsburgh, Penn.: Rosedog Books, 2003.

A fictional account of planning ... or possibly an account of fictional planning.

Tajbakhsh, Kian. The Promise of the City: Space, Identity, and Politics in Contemporary Social Thought. Berkeley, Cal.: University of California Press, 2001.

Finding the contemporary urban scene too complex to be captured by radical or conventional approaches, Kian Tajbakhsh offers a threefold, interdisciplinary approach linking agency, space, and structure. First, he says, urban identities cannot be understood through individualistic, communitarian, or class perspectives but rather through the shifting spectrum of cultural, political, and economic influences. Second, the layered, unfinished city spaces we inhabit and within which we create meaning are best represented not by the image of bounded physical spaces but rather by overlapping and shifting boundaries. And third, the macro forces shaping urban society include bureaucratic and governmental interventions not captured by a purely economic paradigm.