15 books like Gesture and Response

By William Pedersen,

Here are 15 books that Gesture and Response fans have personally recommended if you like Gesture and Response. Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Architecture Unbound: A Century of the Disruptive Avant-Garde

Julie D. Taylor Author Of Spa: The Sensuous Experience

From my list on the art and profession of architecture.

Why am I passionate about this?

Books are my passion; architecture relates to my profession. The combination, for me, is pure joy. I get such pleasure building my personal library of architecture, design, art, and photography books. After having been a magazine editor and writer, I founded Taylor & Company in 1994, to promote the value of architecture and design. My respect for architects is deep—they create something that must function in all ways and are still able to express themselves creatively. The books I’ve selected are all written by architects, giving me an extra layer of admiration for their talents to express themselves in other media. 

Julie's book list on the art and profession of architecture

Julie D. Taylor Why did Julie love this book?

This book is an incredibly impressive feat—20 years in the making, 876 pages—and is necessary to understand the architecture that defines our era. One of America’s most respected architecture critics, Giovannini has spent decades writing about the work of such seminal architects as Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Peter Eisenman, Wolf D. Prix of Coop Himmelb(l)au, Thom Mayne of Morphosis—and so many others that he came to know personally. Giovannini is the perfect person to craft this history. His erudite prose breaks down complex concepts into themes and timelines, putting architecture that resists context into comprehension. I also always love a book that takes its “objectness” into consideration. Weighing in at around 8 pounds, the object’s trapezoidal shape bucks orthogonal conventions—a perfect reflection of the work discussed in its pages. 

By Joseph Giovannini,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Architecture Unbound as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In Architecture Unbound, noted architecture critic Joseph Giovannini proposes that our current architectural landscape ultimately emerged from transgressive and progressive art movements that had roiled Europe before and after World War I. By the 1960s, social unrest and cultural disruption opened the way for investigations into an inventive, antiauthoritarian architecture. Explorations emerged in the 1970s, and built projects surfaced in the 1980s, taking digital form in the 1990s, with large-scale projects finally landing on the far side of the millennium. Architecture Unbound traces all of these developments and influences, presenting an authoritative and illuminating history not only of the sources…


Book cover of Truth and Lies in Architecture

Julie D. Taylor Author Of Spa: The Sensuous Experience

From my list on the art and profession of architecture.

Why am I passionate about this?

Books are my passion; architecture relates to my profession. The combination, for me, is pure joy. I get such pleasure building my personal library of architecture, design, art, and photography books. After having been a magazine editor and writer, I founded Taylor & Company in 1994, to promote the value of architecture and design. My respect for architects is deep—they create something that must function in all ways and are still able to express themselves creatively. The books I’ve selected are all written by architects, giving me an extra layer of admiration for their talents to express themselves in other media. 

Julie's book list on the art and profession of architecture

Julie D. Taylor Why did Julie love this book?

For an architect to take an incisive, unflinching look at his own profession is refreshing and enlightening. Francis-Jones positions architecture’s strengths and failings in reflection to society, politics, equity, aspiration, ecology, power, and defiance. As a promoter of architects and what they do, I’m happy to see a title that places architecture in a broader scope, and in the same breath as other creative expressions, such as film, music, and literature. He raises questions and observations about the nature of architects and architecture that make one think: Is there any truth in architecture? Why are we driven to build so tall? Why do architects feel so sad, overwhelmed, and helpless? Conversely, within its rubric of architecture, Truth and Lies is a book about us—about how people engage and disengage from society and the consequences that ensue. 

By Richard Francis-Jones,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Truth and Lies in Architecture as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"'Truth and Lies in Architecture' delves deep into the soul of architects and their work." - Naser Nader Ibrahim, Amazing Architecture
This is a collection of provocative essays that journey into the vexed circumstance of contemporary architectural practice. The nature of the great cultural, social, political, environmental, and consumerist challenges facing the contemporary architect are explored, interpreted, and questioned, while drawing connections from architecture theory, philosophy, science, literature, and film sources in an attempt to negotiate the territory between the truth and lies in architecture.

These essays written by a leading Australian architect represent a level of comprehensive critical awareness…


Book cover of Designing a World-Class Architecture Firm: The People, Stories, and Strategies Behind HOK

Julie D. Taylor Author Of Spa: The Sensuous Experience

From my list on the art and profession of architecture.

Why am I passionate about this?

Books are my passion; architecture relates to my profession. The combination, for me, is pure joy. I get such pleasure building my personal library of architecture, design, art, and photography books. After having been a magazine editor and writer, I founded Taylor & Company in 1994, to promote the value of architecture and design. My respect for architects is deep—they create something that must function in all ways and are still able to express themselves creatively. The books I’ve selected are all written by architects, giving me an extra layer of admiration for their talents to express themselves in other media. 

Julie's book list on the art and profession of architecture

Julie D. Taylor Why did Julie love this book?

Today, so many large, established architecture firms’ names have been replaced by initials—SOM, HMC, ZGF, HOK, KPF, etc. Too many architecture professionals and students don’t realize or know the people behind the initials. To me, something is lost there. Putting a human face to global firm HOK, MacLeamy tells the stories of its founders—George Hellmuth, Gyo Obata, and George Kassabaum—along with those of many other firm leaders. What really makes this book necessary for anyone who needs to understand the business of architecture (that is, every architect) is that the author weaves pertinent how-to-design-a-business lessons into the history of the firm. It also contains MacLeamy’s personal story of his 50-year career at HOK, the final 13 of which were as CEO of a firm that had grown from 150 employees to nearly 2,000 and from a single office to 27 on three continents during his tenure. Both triumphs and failures…

By Patrick Macleamy,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Designing a World-Class Architecture Firm as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Offers architects and creative services professionals exclusive insights and strategies for success from the former CEO of HOK.

Designing a World Class Architecture Firm: The People, Stories and Strategies Behind HOK tells the history of one of the largest design firms in the world and draws lessons from it that can help other architects, interior designers, urban planners and creative services professionals grow bigger or better. Former HOK CEO Patrick MacLeamy shares the revolutionary strategies HOK's founders deployed to create a brand-new type of architecture firm. He pulls no punches, revealing the triple crisis that almost bankrupted HOK and describes…


Book cover of Etudes: The Poetry of Dreams + Other Fragments

Julie D. Taylor Author Of Spa: The Sensuous Experience

From my list on the art and profession of architecture.

Why am I passionate about this?

Books are my passion; architecture relates to my profession. The combination, for me, is pure joy. I get such pleasure building my personal library of architecture, design, art, and photography books. After having been a magazine editor and writer, I founded Taylor & Company in 1994, to promote the value of architecture and design. My respect for architects is deep—they create something that must function in all ways and are still able to express themselves creatively. The books I’ve selected are all written by architects, giving me an extra layer of admiration for their talents to express themselves in other media. 

Julie's book list on the art and profession of architecture

Julie D. Taylor Why did Julie love this book?

An award-winning architect and poet, Marx explores creative ideas through poetry and watercolors, giving a very different way to view the art and craft of architecture. The paintings have a mysterious calm to them—evoking the work of Giorgio de Chirico—and are poetic in themselves. And then, you get actual poetry alongside the paintings! Graphic artist Jeremy Mende’s layout of the poems adds yet another layer of artistry. The tactility of the book as an object is delightful. Printed on thick watercolor paper, the book appears as a precious portfolio of secret thoughts and dreams. 

By John Marx,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Etudes as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

John Marx's watercolours, first published in the Architectural Review, are a captivating example of an architect's way of thinking. Subtle and quiet they are nonetheless compelling works in how they tackle a sense of place, of inhabiting space and time all the while resonating with the core of one's inner being. There is an existential quality to these watercolours that is rare to be found in this medium. Something akin to the psychologically piercing observational quality of artists like De Chirico or Hopper.

As architects strive to communicate their ideas, it is interesting to explore the world of Marx's watercolours…


Book cover of Returns to Education: An International Comparison

Walter W. McMahon Author Of Higher Learning, Greater Good: The Private and Social Benefits of Higher Education

From my list on the returns of higher education.

Why am I passionate about this?

I've always been interested in trying to make the world a better place, increasing the well-being of families and nations, and not just in making private profit for myself or for some employer. In working as a consultant on education and development in 22 different countries, many of them poor and developing such as Nepal, Malawi, and Indonesia, I've seen a lot of poverty and inequality, and have also come to see how education, including its effects on fertility rates, health, longevity, the survival of democratic institutions and so forth and especially its financing is at the heart of making lives better, especially for children who are the future of each family and each nation.

Walter's book list on the returns of higher education

Walter W. McMahon Why did Walter love this book?

I strongly recommend this book because it is clearly written, explains the methods of estimation, and provides an excellent overview of the extensive worldwide research on the returns to education based on earnings.

It certainly influenced me. It had a massive impact on World Bank lending policies in support of economic development in developing countries. It replaced the kinds of Bank physical capital investment policies such as those supporting dam construction, projects that included educating only for a few people on how to operate dams, with education sector-wide loans that support primary and junior secondary education of the labor force.

Some of these dams later washed out, and forests were destroyed in support of development. The book shows how the returns to investment in primary and secondary education are higher in developing countries where the labor force is often nearly illiterate than they are to investing in other higher levels…

By George Psacharopoulos,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Returns to Education as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Hardback. Jacket a little sunned, worn, with several small nicks along top edge. Boards a little worn at edges only. Previous owner's name label on front endpaper; contents otherwise clean and sound throughout. TPW


Book cover of Beyond Growth: The Economics of Sustainable Development

Sam Pizzigati Author Of The Case for a Maximum Wage

From my list on why we need a world without billionaires.

Why am I passionate about this?

I grew up in the 1950s next door to Long Island’s iconic Levittown. All my aunts and uncles lived in similar modest suburbs, and I assumed everyone else did, too. Maybe that explains why America’s sharp economic U-turn in the 1970s so rubbed me the wrong way. We had become, in the mid-20th century, the first major nation where most people—after paying their monthly bills—had money left over. Today we rate as the world’s most unequal major nation. Our richest 0.1 percent hold as much wealth as our bottom 90 percent. I’ve been working with the Institute for Public Studies, as co-editor of Inequality.org, to change all that.

Sam's book list on why we need a world without billionaires

Sam Pizzigati Why did Sam love this book?

The climate crisis, many of us now understand, may just end up crushing us. What can save us from that crushing?

Greater income equality, the former World Bank economist Herman Daly argued in this concise 1996 volume, has to be central to our solution. Daly, who passed away in 2022, pioneered the discipline of ecological economics.

Our planet, this University of Maryland professor emeritus believed, has “a limit to the total material production that the ecosystem can support.” In other words, we can’t afford to continue grasping for ever more.

We need to center ourselves instead around having enough, and that means, Daly concluded, moving toward adopting a “maximum personal income” since having 99 percent of a limited total product “go to only one person” would be “clearly unjust.”

By Herman E. Daly,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Beyond Growth as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"Daly is turning economics inside out by putting the earth and its diminishing natural resources at the center of the field . . . a kind of reverse Copernican revolution in economics." 
--Utne Reader

"Considered by most to be the dean of ecological economics, Herman E. Daly elegantly topples many shibboleths in Beyond Growth. Daly challenges the conventional notion that growth is always good, and he bucks environmentalist orthodoxy, arguing that the current focus on 'sustainable development' is misguided and that the phrase itself has become meaningless."
--Mother Jones

"In Beyond Growth, . . . [Daly] derides the concept of…


Book cover of The Chairman: John J. McCloy & the Making of the American Establishment

Thomas Ferguson Author Of Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political Systems

From my list on understanding money and power in the United States.

Why am I passionate about this?

The heart of Golden Rule is its presentation of the investment theory of party competition. This developed out of a crucial formative experience of mine as a graduate student at Princeton University in the mid-seventies. An adviser remarked to me that Ivy Lee’s papers were over at Seeley Mudd Library. I knew Lee’s history, as a co-founder (with Edward L. Bernays, the nephew of Sigmund Freud) of public relations in America. I had never consulted an archive – but with an eye to finding some inspiration for my Ph.D. thesis, I decided to go take a look. What I found there changed my whole approach to understanding politics.

Thomas' book list on understanding money and power in the United States

Thomas Ferguson Why did Thomas love this book?

Younger Americans have no direct experience of the Cold War, McCarthyism, or the nineteen sixties. They rarely hear anyone suggest that the government is properly responsible for maintaining full employment. They also have little idea of what the American establishment was when Pax Americana shaped the world. This study conveys that world very well indeed. It benefits once again from a vast amount of primary research. Its depiction of how banks, lawyers, and American multinationals wielded power at the zenith of the “American Century” has few, if any rivals. It vividly shows how someone very few Americans ever heard of rose to the pinnacle of power, shaping not only the U.S., but western Europe (especially Germany), the Mideast, and many other parts of the world. The writing moves briskly along and is especially good at sketching complex situations that are intrinsically tough to convey concretely.

By Kai Bird,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Chairman as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"Exhaustively researched and remarkably evenhanded." -The New York Times

"Absorbing...the definitive life story." -Kirkus Reviews

"A fascinating study." -Los Angeles Times

In The Chairman, the authoritative biography of John J. McCloy, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Kai Bird chronicles the life of the man labeled "the most influential private citizen in America."

Against the backgrounds of World War II, the Cold War, the construction of Pax Americana, the Cuban missile crisis, the Kennedy assassination, and Vietnam, Bird shows us McCloy's astonishing rise from self-described "chore boy" to "chairman of the Establishment."

His powerful circle shaped the postwar globe. But McCloy stood out…


Book cover of Social Entrepreneurship: What Everyone Needs to Know

Alex Counts Author Of Changing the World Without Losing Your Mind: Leadership Lessons from Three Decades of Social Entrepreneurship

From my list on social entrepreneurship and why it is so important.

Why am I passionate about this?

Alex Counts founded Grameen Foundation and became its President and CEO in 1997. A Cornell University graduate, Counts’s commitment to poverty eradication deepened as a Fulbright scholar in Bangladesh, where he trained under Professor Muhammad Yunus, the founder and managing director of Grameen Bank, and co-recipient of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. Since its modest beginnings, Grameen Foundation has grown to become a leading international humanitarian organization. Today he is an independent consultant to mission-driven organizations, a prolific writer, and an adjunct faculty member at the University of Maryland who loves to teach nonprofit leadership and related subjects. 

Alex's book list on social entrepreneurship and why it is so important

Alex Counts Why did Alex love this book?

This short book hits the nail on the head over and over about what social entrepreneurship is, what it isn’t, why it matters, and how it differs from other approaches to causing social change.  I have given it to countless people over the years, especially those seeking their own place in the “do good” ecosystem.  On virtually every page, I found multiple insights about the realities of leading social change that I found not only true but also extremely helpful to me as I reflected on my own journey and its highs and lows as well as its more mundane elements and its many absurdities.

By David Bornstein, Susan Page Davis,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Social Entrepreneurship as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In development circles, there is now widespread consensus that social entrepreneurs represent a far better mechanism to respond to needs than we have ever had before-a decentralized and emergent force that remains our best hope for solutions that can keep pace with our problems and create a more peaceful world.
David Bornstein's previous book on social entrepreneurship, How to Change the World, was hailed by Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times as "a bible in the field" and published in more than twenty countries. Now, Bornstein shifts the focus from the profiles of successful social innovators in that book-and…


Book cover of The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

Robert Kerbeck Author Of RUSE: Lying the American Dream from Hollywood to Wall Street

From my list on cons and scams.

Why am I passionate about this?

Growing up in the automobile business (my great-grandfather sold horse carriages before cars were invented!), I’ve always been fascinated by salesmen and con artists, and the very thin line that often separates the two. What is a sales pitch, for example, and what is an outright lie? Where does the truth live anymore? Media? Politics? Business? None of the above? It has never been more important to learn the truth, and never has it been harder to find it. And it’s this very issue that is dividing the world. We think the other side has been conned. They think we’ve been conned. One thing’s for sure—someone’s getting conned. And that’s why I love con books! 

Robert's book list on cons and scams

Robert Kerbeck Why did Robert love this book?

Whereas I spent my time extracting secret information from corporations to potentially cause their demise, John Perkins was flying around the world trying to do the same thing to developing nations. A sobering tale of bad policies and bad leaders pushed on unsuspecting populations, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man is a nail-biting expose of what America is willing to do regardless of the collateral damage to other countries. 

By John Perkins,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?


***THE WORD OF MOUTH INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER NOW UPDATED WITH 15 EXPLOSIVE NEW CHAPTERS***

False economics. Threats, bribes, extortion. Debt, deception, coups, assassinations and unbridled military power. These are the tools used by the 'corporatocracy' - a vast network of corporations, banks, colluding governments and rich and powerful individuals - to ensure that they retain and expand their wealth and influence, growing richer and richer as the poor become poorer.

In his original, post 9/11 book, John Perkins revealed how he was recruited as an economic hit man in the 1970s, and exposed the corrupt methods American corporations use to spread…


Book cover of The History of Development: From Western Origins to Global Faith

Kathleen R. Smythe Author Of Africa's Past, Our Future

From my list on why African History matters to us all.

Why am I passionate about this?

When I first traveled to Africa in my early 20s as a volunteer teacher, I naively thought I would have much to teach Africans. It became clear quickly that I had far more to learn than I did to teach. Since then, I have been immersed in African cultures and their histories and believe deeply that their long-standing social, political, and economic formations are necessary for a sustainable global future. I have written three books from my African history training and experience, including the one promoted below. I regularly teach introductory and upper-level African History courses at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Kathleen's book list on why African History matters to us all

Kathleen R. Smythe Why did Kathleen love this book?

I loved Rist’s book because it totally changed the way I thought about the idea of development. It made it more complicated and far more sinister than I had been led to believe. His definition alone is provocative: development destroys social and environmental systems. But there is much more here to get one thinking.

He starts by saying that development is a plastic word with so many different meanings that it can apply to almost anything. He traces its use in the West and then its application as a universal ideal through foreign policy and international institutions (like the United Nations and World Bank). The result is global disparity. Development somewhere requires poverty (or less development) elsewhere on a finite planet.

By Gilbert Rist, Patrick Camiller (translator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The History of Development as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In this landmark text, Gilbert Rist provides a comprehensive and compelling overview of what the idea of development has meant throughout history. He traces it from its origins in the Western view of history, through the early stages of the world system, the rise of US hegemony, and the supposed triumph of third-worldism, through to new concerns about the environment and globalization.

Assessing possible postdevelopment models and considering the ecological dimensions of development, Rist contemplates the ways forward. Throughout, he argues persuasively that development has been no more than a collective delusion, which in reality has resulted only in widening…


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