book pickings

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New York

  1. Lonesome Traveler Jack Kerouac “Might as well enjoy it… . Greatest city the world has ever seen.” Kerouac’s tour of the beat night life of New York:

    Lonesome Traveler

    Jack Kerouac

    “Might as well enjoy it… . Greatest city the world has ever seen.” Kerouac’s tour of the beat night life of New York:
  2. All the Buildings in New York James Gulliver Hancock “It is the other ordinary buildings, spilling with hectic daily life, that hold real New York life and passion.” All the buildings in New York, illustrated.

    All the Buildings in New York

    James Gulliver Hancock

    “It is the other ordinary buildings, spilling with hectic daily life, that hold real New York life and passion.” All the buildings in New York, illustrated.
  3. Mapping Manhattan: A Love (And Sometimes Hate) Story in Maps by 75 New Yorkers Becky Cooper “Maps are the places where memories go not to die but to live forever.” A love letter to the city in subjective cartography by Neil deGrasse Tyson, Malcolm Gladwell, Yoko Ono, and 72 other New Yorkers.

    Mapping Manhattan: A Love (And Sometimes Hate) Story in Maps by 75 New Yorkers

    Becky Cooper

    “Maps are the places where memories go not to die but to live forever.” A love letter to the city in subjective cartography by Neil deGrasse Tyson, Malcolm Gladwell, Yoko Ono, and 72 other New Yorkers.
  4. New York: A Serendipiter’s Journey Gay Talese A hierarchy of New York’s cats from the father of literary journalism, with exclusive illustration.

    New York: A Serendipiter’s Journey

    Gay Talese

    A hierarchy of New York’s cats from the father of literary journalism, with exclusive illustration.
  5. New York Nights James & Karla Murray “No other city in the world stages dusk to dawn like New York City.” A breathtaking typographic tour of NYC by night.

    New York Nights

    James & Karla Murray

    “No other city in the world stages dusk to dawn like New York City.”

    A breathtaking typographic tour of NYC by night.
  6. Berenice Abbott: Changing New York Berenice Abbott A breathtaking time-capsule of this ageless, ever-changing city from pioneering photographer Berenice Abbott.

    Berenice Abbott: Changing New York

    Berenice Abbott

    A breathtaking time-capsule of this ageless, ever-changing city from pioneering photographer Berenice Abbott.
  7. The City’s End: Two Centuries of Fantasies, Fears, and Premonitions of New York’s Destruction Prof. Max Page “Visions of New York’s destruction resonated with some of the most longstanding themes in American history: the ambivalence toward cities, the troubled reaction to immigrants and racial diversity, the fear of technology’s impact, and the apocalyptic strain in American religious life. Furthermore, these visions of the city’s end have paralleled the city’s economic, political, racial, and physical transformations. Projections of the city’s end reflected and refracted the dominant social issues. Each era in New York’s modern history has produced its own apocalyptic imagery that explores, exploits, and seeks to resolve contemporary cultural tensions and fears.” A fascinating visual history of 200 years of NYC’s destruction in fiction.

    The City’s End: Two Centuries of Fantasies, Fears, and Premonitions of New York’s Destruction

    Prof. Max Page

    “Visions of New York’s destruction resonated with some of the most longstanding themes in American history: the ambivalence toward cities, the troubled reaction to immigrants and racial diversity, the fear of technology’s impact, and the apocalyptic strain in American religious life. Furthermore, these visions of the city’s end have paralleled the city’s economic, political, racial, and physical transformations. Projections of the city’s end reflected and refracted the dominant social issues. Each era in New York’s modern history has produced its own apocalyptic imagery that explores, exploits, and seeks to resolve contemporary cultural tensions and fears.”

    A fascinating visual history of 200 years of NYC’s destruction in fiction.
  8. The Diary of Anais Nin, Vol. 3: 1939-1944 Anaïs Nin “The ivory tower of the artist may be the only stronghold left for human values, cultural treasures, man’s cult of beauty.”

    The Diary of Anais Nin, Vol. 3: 1939-1944

    Anaïs Nin

    “The ivory tower of the artist may be the only stronghold left for human values, cultural treasures, man’s cult of beauty.”
  9. Central Park: An Anthology Andrew Blauner “You cannot live without establishing an equilibrium between the inner and outer.” Twenty of New York’s most celebrated writers on the magic of Central Park.

    Central Park: An Anthology

    Andrew Blauner

    “You cannot live without establishing an equilibrium between the inner and outer.”

    Twenty of New York’s most celebrated writers on the magic of Central Park.
  10. Abstract City Christoph Niemann The collected visual essays of Christoph Niemann, blending quirky humor with keen insight into the human condition to explore everything from his love-hate relationship with coffee to the fall of the Berlin Wall to his obsession with maps to the familiar drudgery of red-eye flights.

    Abstract City

    Christoph Niemann

    The collected visual essays of Christoph Niemann, blending quirky humor with keen insight into the human condition to explore everything from his love-hate relationship with coffee to the fall of the Berlin Wall to his obsession with maps to the familiar drudgery of red-eye flights.
  11. Love Goes to Buildings on Fire: Five Years in New York That Changed Music Forever Will Hermes NPR and Rolling Stone music and pop culture journalist Will Hermes takes a fascinating “telescopic, panoramic, superhero” lens to what happened in the period between 1973 and 1978 that shaped the course of contemporary culture and popular music in a book about “people taking the lousy hands they’d been dealt and dreaming them into music of great consequence.”

    Love Goes to Buildings on Fire: Five Years in New York That Changed Music Forever

    Will Hermes

    NPR and Rolling Stone music and pop culture journalist Will Hermes takes a fascinating “telescopic, panoramic, superhero” lens to what happened in the period between 1973 and 1978 that shaped the course of contemporary culture and popular music in a book about “people taking the lousy hands they’d been dealt and dreaming them into music of great consequence.”
  12. Store Front (Mini) - The Disappearing Face of New York James T. Murray Photographer duo James and Karla Murray bring the lens of retrostalgia to New York City’s morphing landscape of mom-and-pop shops. For eight years, the Murrays shot the facades of hundred of stores, more than half of which are now gone. From the retrotastic typographic signage to the beautiful vintage color schemes, these storefronts are priceless time-capsules of an era as faded as their paint coats, haunting ghosts caught in the machine of progress.

    Store Front (Mini) - The Disappearing Face of New York

    James T. Murray

    Photographer duo James and Karla Murray bring the lens of retrostalgia to New York City’s morphing landscape of mom-and-pop shops. For eight years, the Murrays shot the facades of hundred of stores, more than half of which are now gone.

    From the retrotastic typographic signage to the beautiful vintage color schemes, these storefronts are priceless time-capsules of an era as faded as their paint coats, haunting ghosts caught in the machine of progress.
  13. The Greatest Grid: The Master Plan of Manhattan, 1811-2011 Hilary Ballon A fascinating catalog of development and destruction, the end of nature and the beginning of urban living, telling the story of New York City’s famed right angles and how they came to be.

    The Greatest Grid: The Master Plan of Manhattan, 1811-2011

    Hilary Ballon

    A fascinating catalog of development and destruction, the end of nature and the beginning of urban living, telling the story of New York City’s famed right angles and how they came to be.
  14. New York Diaries: 1609 to 2009 (Modern Library) Teresa Carpenter A remarkable feat of an anthology, culled from the archives of libraries, museums, and private collections to reveal a dimensional mosaic portrait of the city through the journal entries of the writers, artists, thinkers, and tourists, both famous and not, who dwelled in its grid over the past 400 years — easily the most dynamic and important depiction of the city since E. B. White’s timeless Here Is New York. From the voyeuristic glimpses of famous lives (Edison, Kerouac, Twain, Roosevelt, de Beauvoir) to the textured anonymous masses (businessmen, clergymen, Victorian teenagers) that constitute the intricate living fabric of the city, the diary entries are at once engrossingly intimate and strikingly prototypical of the human condition.

    New York Diaries: 1609 to 2009 (Modern Library)

    Teresa Carpenter

    A remarkable feat of an anthology, culled from the archives of libraries, museums, and private collections to reveal a dimensional mosaic portrait of the city through the journal entries of the writers, artists, thinkers, and tourists, both famous and not, who dwelled in its grid over the past 400 years — easily the most dynamic and important depiction of the city since E. B. White’s timeless Here Is New York.

    From the voyeuristic glimpses of famous lives (Edison, Kerouac, Twain, Roosevelt, de Beauvoir) to the textured anonymous masses (businessmen, clergymen, Victorian teenagers) that constitute the intricate living fabric of the city, the diary entries are at once engrossingly intimate and strikingly prototypical of the human condition.