The State of the Arts in Toronto Star's Gift Guide

It's official: The State of the Arts is the perfect holiday gift. The Toronto Star even includes it in their Book Gift Guide. Luckily, you can still purchase The State of the Arts and receive Coach House's holiday extravaganza 15% discount (until the end of the month).<!--newline--><!--newline-->From the Toronto Star:<!--newline--><!--newline-->A pair of local books couldn't be more unlike in setting and format but share an identical deep and abiding regard for the old hometown.<!--newline--><!--newline-->Sally Gibson makes part of her living as a "heritage consultant" after advance degrees in urban studies and urban geography. She published a previous local history in 1984, More Than an Island, about the Toronto islands. Now Gibson has pulled together, hugely assisted by a flood of black and white images, the handsome and compulsively flip-throughable Inside Toronto: Urban Interiors, 1880s to 1920s (Cormorant, 326 pages, $59.95).<!--newline--><!--newline--><!--newline-->Those cool people who hang out at the Drake and the Gladstone, but only on weekday nights when the suburban club kids aren't around, mount a collective vision of what it will take to ensure a thriving arts scene in the second book in Coach House's uTOpia series, The State of the Arts: Living with Culture in Toronto (352 pages, $24.95), edited by Jonny Dovercourt, Christina Palassio and Alana Wilcox. Applauding, assailing, arguing ... hey, it's the arts crowd, elbows out.<!--newline-->