But New Yorkers don't give it much attention. They leave their trash on the curb or drop it in a litter basket, and promptly forget about it. And why not? On a schedule so regular you could almost set your watch by it, someone always comes to take it away.But who, exactly, is that someone? And why is he—or she—so unknown?In Picking Up, the anthropologist Robin Nagle introduces us to the men and women of New York City's Department of Sanitation and makes clear why this small army of uniformed workers is the most important labor force on the streets. Seeking to understand every aspect of the Department's mission, Nagle accompanied crews on their routes, questioned supervisors and commissioners, and listened to story after story about blizzards, hazardous wastes, and the insults of everyday New Yorkers. But the more time she spent with the DSNY, the more Nagle realized that observing wasn't quite enough—so she joined the force herself. Driving the hulking trucks, she obtained an insider's perspective on the complex kinships, arcane rules, and obscure lingo unique to the realm of sanitation workers.Nagle chronicles New York City's four-hundred-year struggle with trash, and traces the city's waste-management efforts from a time when filth overwhelmed the streets to the far more rigorous practices of today, when the Big Apple is as clean as it's ever been.Throughout, Nagle reveals the many unexpected ways in which sanitation workers stand between our seemingly well-ordered lives and the sea of refuse that would otherwise overwhelm us. In the process, she changes the way we understand cities—and ourselves within them.

    In Naked Airport, critic Alastair Gordon ranges from global geopolitics to action movies to the daily commute, showing how airports have changed our sense of time, distance, style, and even the way cities are built and business is done. Gordon introduces the people who shaped this place of sudden transition: pilots like Charles Lindberg, architects like Eero Saarinen, politicians like Fiorello La Guardia, and Hitler, who built Berlin’s Tempelhof as a showcase for Fascist power. He describes the airport’s futuristic contributions, such as credit cards, in the form of fly-now-pay-later schemes, and he charts its shift in popular perception, from glamorous to infuriating. Finally, he analyzes the airport’s function in war and peace—its gatekeeper role controlling immigration, its appeal to revolutionaries since the hijackings of the 1960s, and its new frontline position in the struggle against terror.Compelling and accessible, Naked Airport is an original history of a long-neglected yet central creation of modern reality and imagination.

    Norman Krumholz

    Through the worst years of the Great Depression as many as five thousand laborers toiled twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, to erect the huge structure that would harness the Colorado River and transform the American West.Construction of the giant dam was a triumph of human ingenuity, yet the full story of this monumental endeavor has never been told. Now, in an engrossing, fast-paced narrative, Joseph E. Stevens recounts the gripping saga of Hoover Dam. Drawing on a wealth of material, including manuscript collections, government documents, contemporary newspaper and magazine accounts, and personal interviews and correspondence with men and women who were involved with the construction, he brings the Hoover Dam adventure to life.Described here in dramatic detail are the deadly hazards the work crews faced as they hacked and blasted the dam’s foundation out of solid rock; the bitter political battles and violent labor unrest that threatened to shut the job down; the deprivation and grinding hardship endured by the workers’ families; the dam builders’ gambling, drinking, and whoring sprees in nearby Las Vegas; and the stirring triumphs and searing moments of terror as the massive concrete wedge rose inexorably from the canyon floor.Here, too, is an unforgettable cast of characters: Henry Kaiser, Warren Bechtel, and Harry Morrison, the ambitious, headstrong construction executives who gambled fortune and fame on the Hoover Dam contract; Frank Crowe, the brilliant, obsessed field engineer who relentlessly drove the work force to finish the dam two and a half years ahead of schedule; Sims Ely, the irascible, teetotaling eccentric who ruled Boulder City, the straightlaced company town created for the dam workers by the federal government; and many more men and women whose courage and sacrifice, greed and frailty, made the dam’s construction a great human, as well as technological, adventure.Hoover Dam is a compelling, irresistible account of an extraordinary American epic.

    Ross Chapin begins the book by outlining the shifts in the scale of community and the American Dream over several generations, leading to super-sized houses in a sea of development, then describes a solution to help restore healthy, livable communities. The first section of the book looks at historic precedents of pocket neighborhoods, from 15th century hofje almshouses in the Netherlands, to a 19th century Methodists Camp Community on Martha’s Vineyard, to early 20th century Garden City models and Southern California Cottage Courtyards. The second section covers a wide range of contemporary pocket neighborhoods, including New Urban communities, affordable housing, houseboat communities, eco-neighborhoods, and Ross Chapin Architects’ own pocket neighborhood examples. The third section focuses on ‘cohousing’ communities, from Danish origins in the 1960s, to examples across America, Australia and New Zealand, including a chapter on senior cohousing. The fourth section looks at retrofitting pocket neighborhoods within existing communities. Throughout the book are series of “Design Keys” that highlight the essential principles of pocket neighborhood planning and design, and short stories about “Pocket Neighborhood Pioneers” who blazed new trails. The book is filled with rich photographs, drawings, illustrations and site plans, and a Resources section at the end provides leads for the reader to explore the topic in further detail.

    Biomimics study nature's most successful ideas over the past 3.5 million years, and adapt them for human use. The results are revolutionizing how materials are invented and how we compute, heal ourselves, repair the environment, and feed the world.Janine Benyus takes readers into the lab and in the field with maverick thinkers as they: discover miracle drugs by watching what chimps eat when they're sick; learn how to create by watching spiders weave fibers; harness energy by examining how a leaf converts sunlight into fuel in trillionths of a second; and many more examples.Composed of stories of vision and invention, personalities and pipe dreams, Biomimicry is must reading for anyone interested in the shape of our future.

    While many of us have imagined the possibility that our time on Earth as humans might end, there are those around the world who are preparing for what they see as the inevitable calamity. With a backdrop that consists of everything from electromagnetic pulses created by solar flares, to an inadvertently triggered nuclear war, to an abiding sense most people have that they're under constant surveillance, cultural geographer Bradley Garrett traces how the "prepping" movement has spread, and the many forms it's now taking.Currently, 3.7 million Americans are preppers. Garrett argues this is a rational response to global, social, and political systems that are failing to produce credible narratives about the stability of the present or the hopefulness of our collective future. Left with a sense of foreboding arising from accelerating climate change, increasing government dysfunctionality, looming threats to critical infrastructure, and the ramping up of invasive monitoring, people all over the world are doing what they've always done in times of crisis: hunkering down. Garrett travels across four continents to meet those who are preparing go-bags, constructing panic rooms, building underground backyard survival chambers, hiding inflatable rafts, rigging mobile "bugout" vehicles, and burrowing deep into the Earth.A captivating mix of intriguing people and places, Bunker is a fascinating, inside look at a growing global phenomenon.

    Stilgoe has developed and practiced the art of exploring the everyday world around us, where so much lies hidden just beneath the surface, offering uncommon knowledge if we but know what to look for. In this remarkable book, Stilgoe inspires us to become explorers on our own–on foot or on bicycle–and by so doing to reap the benefits of escaping, even temporarily, the traps of our programmed lives."Exploration encourages creativity, serendipity, invention," he writes. And while sharing his insights on how to explore, Stilgoe provides a fascinating pocket history of the American landscape, as striking in its originality as it is revealing. Stilgoe dissects our visual surroundings; his observations will transform the way you see everything. Through his eyes, an abandoned railroad line is redolent of history and future promise; front lawns recall our agrarian past; vacant lots hold cathedrals of potential.From the electrical grid overhead to fences, malls, and main streets, Stilgoe offers a fresh understanding of the links and fractures in our society. After reading Outside Lies Magic, your world will never look the same again.

    This book recreates the city in its teeming, unknowable variety. Part fact, part fiction, it holds up a mirror to the modern city and finds there a stage for a unique personal drama.

    We live with travel delays on congested roads, shipping delays on clogged railways, and delays on repairs, project approvals, and funding due to gridlocked leadership. These delays affect us all, whether you are a daily commuter, a frequent flyer, an entrepreneur, an online shopper, a job-seeker, or a community leader. If people can't move, if goods are delayed, and if information networks can't connect, then economic opportunity deteriorates and social inequity grows.We have been stuck for too long, writes Harvard Business School professor and best-selling author Rosabeth Moss Kanter. In Move, Kanter visits cities and states across the country to tackle our challenges—and reveal solutions—on the roads and rails, and in our cities, skies, and the halls of Washington, D.C. We meet a visionary engineer and public servant spearheading an underwater tunnel in Miami to streamline port operations and redirect constant traffic from the city center. We see mayors partnering with large corporations and nimble entrepreneurs to unveil parking apps, bike-sharing programs, and seamless Wi-Fi networks in greener, more vibrant, more connected cities. And we learn about much-needed efforts—such as dynamic tolls on highways and fees based on vehicle miles traveled—to reduce our dependence on the outmoded gasoline tax in our new electric car age.It all adds up to a new vision for American mobility, where local leaders shape initiatives without waiting for Congress to act, and ambitious companies partner with governments to tackle projects that serve the public good, create jobs, and improve quality of life while providing healthy sources of investment. With unique insight and unrivaled expertise, Kanter gives us a sweeping look across America, revealing the innovative projects, vital leaders, and bold solutions that are moving our transportation infrastructure toward a cleaner, faster, and more prosperous future.

    Author Kim Leggett is the creator of City Farmhouse, an interior design business, pop-up antiquing fairs, and vintage store. She is also a legendary “picker” and favorite designer to celebrity clients (and country-style mavens) including Meg Ryan, Ralph Lauren, Sheryl Crow, and Phillip Sweet and Kimberly Schlapman of Little Big Town. In City Farmhouse Style, Leggett offers great style advice, breaking down the design vocabulary that makes for fresh country style (no matter the setting).   The popularity of farmhouse style has designers, home­owners, and fans in search of inspiration to create this look in all its rural glory. City Farmhouse Style is the first design book of its kind to focus entirely on transforming urban interiors with unfussy, welcoming, country-style decor.

    Today, it is the site of Broadway and Wall Street, the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty, and the home of millions of people, who have come from every corner of the nation and the globe.In Gotham, Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace have produced a monumental work of history, one that ranges from the Indian tribes that settled in and around the island of Manna-hata, to the consolidation of the five boroughs into Greater New York in 1898. It is an epic narrative, a story as vast and as varied as the city it chronicles, and it underscores that the history of New York is the story of our nation. Readers will relive the tumultuous early years of New Amsterdam under the Dutch West India Company, Peter Stuyvesant's despotic regime, Indian wars, slave resistance and revolt, the Revolutionary War and the defeat of Washington's army on Brooklyn Heights, the destructive seven years of British occupation, New York as the nation's first capital, the duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton, the Erie Canal and the coming of the railroads, the growth of the city as a port and financial center, the infamous draft riots of the Civil War, the great flood of immigrants, the rise of mass entertainment such as vaudeville and Coney Island, the building of the Brooklyn Bridge and the birth of the skyscraper. Here too is a cast of thousands--the rebel Jacob Leisler and the reformer Joanna Bethune; Clement Moore, who saved Greenwich Village from the city's street-grid plan; Herman Melville, who painted disillusioned portraits of city life; and Walt Whitman, who happily celebrated that same life. We meet the rebel Jacob Leisler and the reformer Joanna Bethune; Boss Tweed and his nemesis, cartoonist Thomas Nast; Emma Goldman and Nellie Bly; Jacob Riis and Horace Greeley; police commissioner Theodore Roosevelt; Colonel Waring and his "white angels" (who revolutionized the sanitation department); millionaires John Jacob Astor, Cornelius Vanderbilt, August Belmont, and William Randolph Hearst; and hundreds more who left their mark on this great city.The events and people who crowd these pages guarantee that this is no mere local history. It is in fact a portrait of the heart and soul of America, and a book that will mesmerize everyone interested in the peaks and valleys of American life as found in the greatest city on earth. Gotham is a dazzling read, a fast-paced, brilliant narrative that carries the reader along as it threads hundreds of stories into one great blockbuster of a book.

    This is a wonderful book."--Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit and Smarter Faster Better A crash on the Washington, D.C. metro system. An accidental overdose in a state-of-the-art hospital. An overcooked holiday meal. At first glance, these disasters seem to have little in common. But surprising new research shows that all these events--and the myriad failures that dominate headlines every day--share similar causes. By understanding what lies behind these failures, we can design better systems, make our teams more productive, and transform how we make decisions at work and at home.Weaving together cutting-edge social science with riveting stories that take us from the frontlines of the Volkswagen scandal to backstage at the Oscars, and from deep beneath the Gulf of Mexico to the top of Mount Everest, Chris Clearfield and Andras Tilcsik explain how the increasing complexity of our systems creates conditions ripe for failure and why our brains and teams can't keep up. They highlight the paradox of progress: Though modern systems have given us new capabilities, they've become vulnerable to surprising meltdowns--and even to corruption and misconduct.But Meltdown isn't just about failure; it's about solutions--whether you're managing a team or the chaos of your family's morning routine. It reveals why ugly designs make us safer, how a five-minute exercise can prevent billion-dollar catastrophes, why teams with fewer experts are better at managing risk, and why diversity is one of our best safeguards against failure. The result is an eye-opening, empowering, and entirely original book--one that will change the way you see our complex world and your own place in it.

    From Big Ben to the grimy Victorian streets of Dickens novels on up to the sleek high-rises that dot the skyline of the twenty-first-century metropolis, the urban landscape of London is steeped in history, while forever responsive to the changing dictates of progress, industry, and culture. In London: A Life in Maps, acclaimed historian Peter Whitfield reveals a wealth of surprising truths and forgotten facts hidden in the city’s historic maps.Whitfield examines nearly 200 maps spanning the last 500 years, all of which vividly demonstrate the vast changes wrought on London’s streets, open spaces, and buildings. In a rich array of colorful cartographic illustrations, the maps chronicle London’s tumultuous history, from the devastation of the Great Fire to the indelible marks left by World Wars I and II to the emergence of the West End as a fashion mecca. Whitfield reads historic sketches and detailed plans as biographical keys to this complex, sprawling urban center, and his in-depth examination unearths fascinating insights into the city of black cabs and red double-deckers. With engaging prose and astute analysis he also expertly coaxes out the subtle complexities—of social history, urban planning, and design—within the rich documentation of London’s immense and constantly changing cityscape.London: A Life in Maps lets readers wander through the past and present of London’s celebrated streets—from Abbey Road to Savile Row—and along the way reveals the city’s captivating history, vibrant culture, and potential future.

    It means more than the arrival of trendy shops, much-maligned hipsters, and expensive lattes. The very future of American cities as vibrant, equitable spaces hangs in the balance.Peter Moskowitz's How to Kill a City takes readers from the kitchen tables of hurting families who can no longer afford their homes to the corporate boardrooms and political backrooms where destructive housing policies are devised. Along the way, Moskowitz uncovers the massive, systemic forces behind gentrification in New Orleans, Detroit, San Francisco, and New York. The deceptively simple question of who can and cannot afford to pay the rent goes to the heart of America's crises of race and inequality. In the fight for economic opportunity and racial justice, nothing could be more important than housing.A vigorous, hard-hitting expose, How to Kill a City reveals who holds power in our cities-and how we can get it back