77 books like New York, New York

Jane Jacob’s groundbreaking, disruptive classic is first on many people’s lists. A journalist without a college degree and no formal training in urban planning, she blew up the once-established view that old-fashioned streets and buildings were done for, and that towers in the park surrounded by highways and parking lots were the way to go. Her portrait of her neighborhood in the West Village is deeply moving, and she almost single-handedly brought back these types of places as ideals.

However, she missed a lot. She didn’t understand the importance of infrastructure. She barely mentions the subways. She described her beloved streets as if they grew there, which was not the case. Reading this classic with a critical eye is the best way to do it. Jane Jacobs has become Saint Jane to many, but it’s important to see what she missed and what she got right.

New sections of cities, new neighborhoods, and big infrastructure projects are aspirational for societies. They aren’t just about problem-solving. In this great book, historian Robert Fishman shows how London and Paris developed differently because they had different ideals and different aspirations.

As it began to grow due to industrialization in the late 18th century, London prioritized the development of townhouses, its urban ideal. This caused it to become a sprawling, low-rise city. Paris developed in the mid-19th century as a city of glamorous, stylish apartment buildings because this was Paris’s ideal.

Parisians valued the street and cultural life that apartment life generated. The title of this book is off-putting for me because it sounds so academic. But Fishman, a trained historian, writes well and gives you big ideas and details in a readable package. 

Joel Garreau, a longtime reporter for The Washington Post, was one of the first people to take the sprawling suburbs, the collections of malls, subdivisions, and office parks seriously. He was one of the first people to call them cities. After publishing his book, academics, and professional urban planners began discussing “edge cities.”

Garreau gives many specifics because he is a reporter, which is how he works. He travels the country looking at different edge cities, starting with the one in his own backyard, Tyson’s Corner, outside Washington, D.C.

Accurate prophets are few, but in the title essay of this book, the critic Lewis Mumford tells with eerie precedence just how the United States of America will be transformed, often for the worse, by the overinvestment in highways and the neglect of railroads.

Mumford originally wrote this for The New Yorker, where he was the in-house architecture critic. As the country was going all in on the new Interstate Highway System, Mumford was one of the few who foresaw the flaws of this one-dimensional megaproject. 

When Bill (William John) Cunningham (1929-2016), son of an Irish Catholic family from Boston, moved to New York at the tender age of 19 in 1948, it became the life-defining step in his career as probably the most famous fashion photographer in the metropolis. He had been interested in fashion from an early age and sold his first hats. After returning from military service in Korea in 1953, he began photographing fashion and writing articles for Women's Wear Daily and the Chicago Tribune.

It is no exaggeration to say that Cunningham's fashion sense and photography quickly shaped a new style of fashion journalism. His "street style" brought fashion, no matter how expensive or luxurious, into the world of everyday life. Cunningham made fashion interesting again only through his point of view and photographs. The quiet, always curious and meticulous Cunningham also became known for his commitment to the gay… show more.

This is historical for people who usually roll their eyes at unrealistic regency historicals.

Our firecracker Manuela wants a debauched summer before she gets married off, and Duchess Cora is who she wants. But besides the sumptuous 1889 Paris setting we get a beautiful love story that fits in its time but also eschews it. I love this whole series and can’t wait for the next one.  

This gripping novel is based on the 2012 murder case in New York City in which two children were stabbed to death by their nanny. From the first gripping sentence, “The baby is dead” until the last, this psychological thriller set in Paris never lets up with a fast pace and smart sentences. I loved this book. Although it portrays my worst fear, it does so with sophisticated empathy for all involved. As NPR said about the book, “In Slimani’s hands, the unthinkable becomes art.” I devoured it in two days.

To begin with, I was immediately drawn to this novel because (bless the author) it is located in my own hometown. For those in New York or Paris, this may not be a big deal; but if you live in a relatively small Canadian city, that’s quite exciting. The main character, Joanne Kilbourn, was also named for me. And yes, I have thanked Gail Bowen for this gift. 

All right, that’s not actually true, but one can dream. Joanne is a strong but gentle cozy detective with intense motherly instincts and an extremely sharp mind. I adore her.

Simone de Beauvoir met Nelson Algren in Chicago in 1947.

A couple of years later, his novel The Man with the Golden Arm won the National Book Award, and a few years after that De Beauvoir won the prestigious Prix Goncourt for her novel The Mandarins, which featured a character based on Algren. They became famous literary lovers, involved in a complicated triangle with De Beauvoir’s long-time partner Sartre.

But Cowie’s novel brings to life the ordinary intimacies and misunderstandings of their love affair – the title comes from de Beauvoir’s confusion about the time difference between Paris and Chicago. Caught up in the details of day-to-day life, people, even brilliant writers, don’t always have the time or vision to make real decisions about how they want to live, or who they want to love. It’s a brilliant book. 

A remarkable tracing of the evolution of singing throughout the decades. Occasionally Scott is dismissive, (sometimes of the most famous singers) but his remarks are always intriguing and thought-provoking. Through his text, Scott causes one to re-evaluate some of the most famous singers and the reason for their fame.