Ian Frazer's travelogue revisits the time in his life when Russia was new to him. (He makes one mistake, however, suggesting that Milwaukee doesn't have a beach on Lake Michigan). Jonathan Alter, a journalist and former Newsweek editor, charts Chicago's political history and his own from the race riots in 1968 through to Barack Obama's election and victory speech in Grant Park. The individual essays by writers such as Zadie Smith, Candice Bergen and Bill Clinton reveal more about the writers than the parks, though the overall collection makes the point that these places are important touchstones. This book explores 18 city parks around the world from personal perspectives. Even an empty park can be filled with a sense that loves have been found and lost there, of important conversations and ideas that have been had, of large occasions and small, everyday moments. "City Parks: Public Places, Private Thoughts" edited by Catie Marron (Harper, $50) is a reminder of the way parks become vessels for experience and imagination. Today, it can be easy to forget how essential these physical places can be and what they represent - a manifestation of our democracy, for instance. They were places to see and be seen, to share status updates, to be present in society. In generations past, public parks were a bit like Facebook.
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