Matt Hern

One Game at a Time

Matt Hern

• Matt Hern tackles the issues of sports from a much needed left perspective. Sports are the most significant uniting force in our culture, yet the Left has thus far shied away from engaging in this vital platform.• This book tackles the fundamental aspects that draws us to sports. Specifically the most authentic experiences we gain as athletes and fans. • High art and sports are not dissimilar, and Matt Hern shows us how the only differences fall along class and cultural lines. • Matt Hern asks us why struggle, pain and hardship hold a paramount sense of authenticity culturally. What is it about playing and watching sports that seems to engage us on a universal human level?• This book speaks not only to sports fans, but specifically to non-sports fans illustrating the importance of engaging as both an observer and a participant in the world’s greatest pass time.

Common Ground in a Liquid City

Matt Hern

If we want to preserve what's still left of the natural world, we need to stop using so much of it. And, says veteran environmental activist Matt Hern, cities are the best chance we have left for a truly ecological future . . . but what does it take to make a truly sustainable city? Common Ground in a Liquid City is a fun and engaging look at the future of urban life. Hern takes us on a journey through over a dozen urban centers, from Vancouver to Istanbul, Las Vegas, and beyond, exploring the history and current composition of cities around the globe and highlighting the elements of each that make it livable. Each of Hern's ten chapters focuses on a central theme of city life: diversity, street life, crime, population density, water and natural life, gentrification, and globalism. What emerges in the end is an appealing portrait of what the urban future might look like—environmentally friendly, locally focused, and governed from below. Matt Hern is an inveterate city dweller and an environmental and education activist. The editor of Everywhere All the Time: A New Deschooling Reader and the author of Deschooling Our Lives and Field Day, he founded Vancouver's Car-Free Day and is the director of the Purple Thistle Center for alternative education. These days, he lives in Vancouver with his partner and daughters and lectures widely around the globe.