Triumph of the City
by Edward Glaeser
(Penguin, $30)
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Edward Glaeser’s “enthusiasm for cities is refreshing,” said Diana Silver in The New York Times. After touring metropolises as distinct as Tokyo, Houston, and Bangalore, India, the Harvard economist champions greater density above all: To him, more people always means greater possibilities for innovation and economic mobility, so Paris should build higher and America should end policies that subsidize sprawl. Even if such proposals seem unrealistic, you’ll still be “fascinated by this writer’s nimble mind.”
Venice: Pure City
by Peter Ackroyd
(Nan A. Talese, $37.50)
“In the long years of its decline, Venice has always managed to evoke both the rhapsodic and the mysterious,” said Tim Rutten in the Los Angeles Times. Peter Ackroyd’s 32nd book, written in “lapidary prose,” compiles an encyclopedic amount of information about “La Serenissima,” from its founding by “marsh dwellers” to its faded present. His “evocation of Venetian light—and of the role distinctive building materials play in refracting it—fits lovingly into the rhapsodic tradition.”
Odessa
by Charles King
(Norton, $28)
Something about Odessa has always set the city apart, said Steven Zipperstein in The New Republic. Founded just two centuries ago “on land grabbed from the Ottomans,” it’s never quite been Russian and “certainly not Ukrainian,” and Charles King’s “crisp, reliable” portrait captures that. King also handles well the story of a city that was both an ethnic melting pot and a site of massive Jewish pogroms, a city that was both young and a source of nostalgia from the moment it came to be.
Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas
by Rebecca Solnit
(Univ. of California, $25)
In this “deeply evocative” collection of maps and essays, author Rebecca Solnit makes visible her notion that “no two people live in the same city,” said Lynell George in the Los Angeles Times. Enlisting the help of more than a dozen other writers and cartographers, the San Francisco essayist has created 22 maps representing 22 different ways that their city exists in its residents’ imaginations. The book encourages you to recognize that “place” is a concept that’s “beyond subjective.”
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