Fans pick 86 books like Less

Every biographer must do battle with Robert Caro’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, a monumental account of urban planner Robert Moses, whose God-like power redesigning postwar New York City effectively remade the capital of the twentieth century. Over the course of 1,336 pages, Caro details Moses’s world-making vision while also acknowledging problematic issues, such as Moses’s reported use of racial slurs and his remapping of roads and overpasses to exclude poorer communities.

Today, half a century since its first publication, The Power Broker remains one of the greatest English-language biographies. It's also a landmark in showing how world-historical change can begin with aesthetic power. Like all foundational texts, its comprehensive documenting of both the ambitions and the prejudices of that era also lays a path for future insight. In gesturing toward Moses’s faults, this magisterial work also leaves room for subsequent generations to re-examine the problems of the past. 

Disposable City takes a look at the effects of climate change on the coastal city of Miami from a journalistic perspective. It’s a zoomed-out, eagle-eye perspective examining how the intersection of natural disasters, politics, and cultures affect the way cities are shaped. This book makes the list because it reminds us that our everyday choices have a rippling effect outside our own four walls.

From the hosts of HGTV’s Backyard Envy, Take It Outside delves into one of our favorite topics: outdoor design and indoor-outdoor living. What this book does better than any other on the topic is connect the interiors to the exteriors. That cohesion is something we really value, and fortunately, it would seem, so do consumers. Requests for outdoor living rooms and kitchens have been trending upwards for the past several years. 

When we think about the fundamental purpose of interior space, creating shelter is about heating, cooling, and lighting. This recommendation is more for the professional designer than the DIY’er, but it is the handbook for a reason. It breaks down all of the fundamentals and their importance and emphasizes net-zero design strategies for sustainable building. 

The surest way I’ve found to break the cycle of materialism is to develop an aesthetic for less, then face head-on the results of past consumptive behaviors. Marie Kondo’s book is the best there is on this subject. When stepping out of the rat race, many folks have a tendency to hoard as a fear reflex. Kondo’s words and wisdom, even if you can’t bring yourself to follow every last dictum, will help you see and feel the effects of materialism, and naturally shed that compulsion to “have more.”  I was always an “anti-consumer.” But it felt like a strict diet — I was resisting a compulsion to acquire more. 

After this book, then following her recommendations, that compulsion went away for good. I didn’t just think less was better. I felt it down to my core. My savings grew, my house got cleaner (relatively speaking), and I became far… show more.

There are dozens of small-space books that I could have chosen for decor inspiration, but this one from Monocle is a personal favorite, in part because the photos, while gorgeous, are not overly styled. It features homes from around the world, including many in Europe, and most are primary residences, not guest houses or weekend homes that often fill small-space books. Much like the magazine, this book opens with several thoughtful essays on what it means to live in a “cosy” space. With its linen cover and hefty size, it would make a great housewarming gift for anyone living in a small space.

Even though her heroine is Vita Sackville-West who, in the 1930s, created Sissinghurst, one of the world’s most visited gardens, I think of Benson as a hippy, outdoors version of Martha Stewart. In this paperback, her fast lane, quick gratification approach to gardening comes across with equal doses of humor as she emphasizes the joy of digging one’s hands into the soil and the importance of channeling one’s own aesthetic into hedge and plant choices. Her opinions are pithy, to say the least - she considers marigolds to be ‘hackneyed’ flowers; she talks about weeds having brains and calls the green thumb notion a fallacy - but her passion for nature, which shines through on every page, is contagious.

She sheds are usually small spaces and everyone can relate to the challenges of creating beauty with limited resources. This smart book pays homage to living small and makes you see wonderful possibilities where none existed before. I love walking through Whitney’s charming “Tiny Canal Cottage” as she calls it, the 400-square-foot place she shares with her husband, young son, and two dogs in Venice, California. The table of contents isn’t satisfied with vague chapter titles – nope, you get numbered ideas (238!) that are specific and doable. I love #026, which shows you how to trade a coffee table for a shallow shelf behind the couch. Also handy are tricks to quickly turn your living room into a spare bedroom, or a dining room, or a home office, and then turn it back into a living space again. You’ll meet kindred spirits in the design realm who offer their… show more.

Known as the First Lady of interior decoration, de Wolfe (1865-1950) excelled in a predominantly male profession which she is credited with inventing. Her book which, is still thought of as a decorator’s bible, was first published in 1913. It’s a compilation of several of her chatty magazine articles so even though her clientele was elite the strong doses of common sense, wit, and sophistication in her voice have mass appeal. Described as an ornamental minimalist she upturned the oppressiveness of the Victorian and Edwardian sensibility by avoiding clutter, dark colors, and heavy draperies in favor of sparsely furnished, naturally lit rooms (which she considered to be optimistic) that seamlessly aligned themselves with their natural surroundings. In that sense, she was one of the first decorators to acknowledge nature and to emphasize the importance of incorporating garden and exterior views into interior planning.

I used to fancy myself as having a green thumb, until I planted my first outdoor garden.

These days I’m back inside with Hilton Carter’s Living Wild. Based in Baltimore, Carter is a director, editor, and fine artist with an encyclopedic knowledge about plants and how to style them. He’s also the dad to 250 plants including a fiddle-leaf named Frank.

In this, his fourth book, Living Wild, he talks about everything that is needed to design a “living home” and walks the reader through rooms he’s styled and his process. Check out his Instagram for a Living Wild playlist.