American Architecture

This stunning book by renowned television historian Dan Cruickshank tells the history of architecture through the stories of 100 iconic buildings. Journeying through time and place, from the ancient Egyptian pyramids to the soaring skyscrapers of Manhattan, renowned architectural historian Dan...

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...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Globe-trotting golfer Tom Coyne has finally come home. And he’s ready to play all of it. After playing hundreds of courses overseas in the birthplace of golf,​ Coyne, the bestselling author of A Course Called Ireland and A Course Called Scotland, returns to his own...

From frozen glaciers to towering skyscrapers — this is the complete epic history of one of America’s most powerful and transformative cities. Empire of the Prairie takes readers on a sweeping historical journey through Chicago’s rise from a marshy portage on the edge of Lake Michigan to a global center of finance, architecture, industry, culture, and innovation. This deeply researched and narrative-driven chronicle captures every defining era of the city: ✔ The geological forces that shaped the land thousands of years ago ✔ Indigenous stewardship and the significance of the ...

Journalist Julie Satow's thrilling, unforgettable history of how one illustrious hotel has defined our understanding of money and glamour, from the Gilded Age to the Go-Go Eighties to today's Billionaire Row. From the moment in 1907 when New York millionaire Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt strode...

What if the United States is more than a nation—what if it is a symbolic construction shaped by ritual, myth, architecture, and collective belief? In The American Egregore, Magnus Barton offers an esoteric interpretation of the American story. Drawing on Rosicrucianism, Freemasonry, Hermetic philosophy, and the history of modern occult thought, this book explores how symbols, ceremonies, sacred spaces, money, and media participate in the making of national identity. From the dream of a New Atlantis to the ceremonial language of the early republic, from the geometry of Washington, D.C. to ...

“Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.” — from Invisible Cities In a garden sit the aged Kublai Khan and the young Marco Polo —...

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...

How the world broke—and how we can still save it The liberal world order that emerged after World War II—and expanded triumphantly following the Cold War—is unraveling. Multilateral cooperation is giving way to multipolar rivalry and conflict. Global norms are eroding. What comes next will...

A Scientific American Favorite Book of 2025 The riveting story of the McKissack family—the founders of the leading Black design and construction firm in the United States, from its beginnings in the mid-1800s to its thriving status today—in a moving celebration of resilience and innovation...

Winner of the 2024 George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language, given by the National Council of Teachers of English "Making Americans shines a light on the barriers that immigrant students in the US face—and shares some inspiring stories about...

This new biography—featuring over 150 archival images and full-color photographs printed throughout—introduces Julia Morgan as both a pioneering architect and a captivating individual. Julia Morgan was a lifelong trailblazer. She was the first woman admitted to study architecture at the...

#1 Kids Indie Next List * Parents Magazine Best Book of the Year * Chicago Public Library Best of the Best Book of the Year * SLJ Best Book of the Year * Kirkus Best Book of the Year * Junior Library Guild Selection * Edgar Award Nominee * Four Starred Reviews * Bank Street Best Children’s...

In the last three decades of the nineteenth century, an American buffalo herd once numbering 30 million animals was reduced to twenty-three. It was the era of Manifest Destiny, a gilded age that viewed the West as nothing more than a treasure chest of resources to be dug up or shot down...

A fascinating biography of the philanthropist Albert Barnes, whose pioneering collection of modern art was meant to transform America’s soul From prominent critic and biographer Blake Gopnik comes a compelling new art collector biography of America’s first great collector of modern art...

From the earliest corrals of the mid-1800s (Union Grounds in Brooklyn was a "saloon in the open air"), to the much mourned parks of the early 1900s (Detroit's Tiger Stadium, Cincinnati's Palace of the Fans), to the stadiums we fill today, Paul Goldberger makes clear the inextricable bond between the American city and America's favorite pastime. In the changing locations and architecture of our ballparks, Goldberger reveals the manifestations of a changing society.

The scandal. The genius. The murder that shocked America. Frank Lloyd Wright was more than the mind behind America's most iconic buildings—he was a man whose turbulent private life captivated a nation. The famous architect's stormy marriage to Kitty Wright and his infamous affair with another...

"A hugely entertaining achievement." –Esquire “An engaging survey through a period of intellectual history that reveals as much about people who wear watches as the objects on their wrists." – Wall Street Journal "As impeccably crafted and precisely engineered as any of the watches on...

“[A] winningly obsessive history of our relationship with underground places” (The Guardian), from sacred caves and derelict subway stations to nuclear bunkers and ancient underground cities—an exploration of the history, science, architecture, and mythology of the worlds beneath our feet...

2020 Audie Awards Finalist—Middle Grade Winner of the Newbery Medal, Coretta Scott King Author Award, and Kirkus Prize for Young Readers’ Literature, and an Audie Award finalist! An original full-cast audio adaptation of the graphic novel from award-winning author-illustrator Jerry Craft...