House Architecture

An illuminating history of Harvard College, one of the institutions that made America what it is today, from its precarious colonial origins to its conflicted role as a bastion of elites and a beacon of meritocracy in an age suspicious of both. When Harvard College was born into the colonial...

A groundbreaking archeologist offers a bottom-up perspective on humankind through the essential materials that have shaped our lives—from the wood and soil that built civilization to the plastic and concrete that threaten to destroy it. Entire prehistoric epochs are named after materials...

From one of the most beloved authors of our time—more than six million copies of his books have been sold in this country alone—a fascinating excursion into the history behind the place we call home. “Houses aren’t refuges from history. They are where history ends up.” Bill Bryson and...

Take a deep dive into the captivating customs, fashion choices, and yes, gossip, surrounding the British royal family with this fascinating illustrated primer from TikTok's #1 royal commentator. Let's be honest: we all have a favorite royal, whether it's Princess Diana, Kate Middleton, Meghan...

In this audacious historical novel, an American spy agrees to help the victors divide up the spoils of World War I by literally drawing the new borders of the Middle East—only to discover that the relic he holds has far greater power than he could have imagined. In 1917, Elias Winters arrives...

Thirty years after its publication, The Death and Life of Great American Cities was described by The New York Times as "perhaps the most influential single work in the history of town planning....[It] can also be seen in a much larger context. It is first of all a work of literature; the...

Jordan B. Peterson's Maps of Meaning is now available for the first time as an audio download! Why have people from different cultures and eras formulated myths and stories with similar structures? What does this similarity tell us about the mind, morality, and structure of the world itself?...

Frank Lloyd Wright has long been known as a rank egotist who held in contempt almost everything aside from his own genius. Harder to detect, but no less real, is a Wright who fully understood, and suffered from, the choices he made. This is the Wright whom Paul Hendrickson reveals in this...

In this mesmerizing memoir-in-essays, New York Times best-selling author Erica Bauermeister renovates a trash-filled house in eccentric Port Townsend, Washington, and in the process takes listeners on a journey to discover the ways our spaces subliminally affect us. A personal, accessible, and literary exploration of the psychology of architecture, this book is designed for homeowners, remodelers, and those who are simply curious about how our built environments shape who we become.

Horror begins at home. From family homes in Amityville to Gothic mansions in Los Angeles and the Unabomber's cabin, houses often capture and contain the horror that has happened within them. Sick Houses crosses the threshold of these eerie spaces to explore how different types of architecture become vessels for terror and how these spaces, meant to shelter us, instead become the source of our deepest fears.

Slave narratives are extremely rare. Of the one hundred or so of these testimonies that survive, a mere handful are first-person accounts by slaves who ran away and freed themselves. Now two newly uncovered narratives, and the biographies of the men who wrote them, join that exclusive group...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER “A comprehensive, entertaining, and compelling argument for how rebuilding social infrastructure can help heal divisions in our society and move us forward.”—Jon Stewart NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR “Engaging.”—Mayor Pete Buttigieg, The...

A surprising, charming, and ever-fascinating history of the seemingly simple game that has had a profound effect on societies the world over. Why has one game, alone among the thousands of games invented and played throughout human history, not only survived but thrived within every culture it...

Broadway's 2024-25 season generated $1.89 billion in gross receipts, 14.7 million admissions, and a 91.2 percent occupancy rate across forty-one theatres. It was the highest-grossing season in recorded history. In the same season, zero of eighteen commercially produced musicals recouped their investment. Since the pandemic, forty-six new musicals have opened on Broadway at a combined capitalization cost approaching $800 million. All but four failed. The Broadway Machine examines how this paradox is produced. Ten chapters isolate ten structural components of the system: the real estate ...

W. G. Sebald’s celebrated masterpiece, “one of the supreme works of art of our time” (The Guardian), follows a man’s search for the answer to his life’s central riddle. “Haunting . . . a powerful and resonant work of the historical imagination . . . Reminiscent at once of Ingmar...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From the author of The House of Lincoln, an “enthralling” novel that brings “the buried truths of the ill-starred relationship of Mamah Borthwick Cheney and Frank Lloyd Wright to light” (The New York Times Book Review). “Masterful.”—People “A...

From the widely acclaimed poet, novelist, critic, and scholar, a lucid and edifying exploration of the building blocks of poetry and how they've been used over the centuries to assemble the most imperishable poems. “Anyone wanting to learn how to remodel, restore, or build a poem from the...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER From the hosts of The War on Cars podcast, a searing indictment of how cars ruin everything—and what we can do to fight back When the very first cars rolled off production lines, they were a technological marvel, predicted to make life easier and better for all Americans...

A novel in The L.A. Quartet. Internationally acclaimed author James Ellroy presents another literary noir masterpiece of historical paranoia. Los Angeles, 1958. Killings, beatings, bribes, shakedowns—it's standard procedure for Lieutenant Dave Klein, LAPD. He's a slumlord, a bagman, an...

In her bestselling memoirs Ruth Reichl has long illuminated the theme of how food defines us, and never more so than in her dazzling fiction debut about sisters, family ties, and a young woman who must finally let go of guilt and grief to embrace her own true gifts. Billie Breslin...