Social Science - Sociology - Urban

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER - A modern American classic, this huge and galvanizing biography of Robert Moses reveals not only the saga of one man's incredible accumulation of power but the story of his shaping (and mis-shaping) of twentieth-century New York. One of the Modern...

How housing policy failed the people it was designed to help -- and how to fix it As the US struggles to provide affordable housing, millions of Americans live in deteriorating public housing projects, enduring the mistakes of past housing policy. In The Projects,...

In The Promised Republic, Russell Burge offers a bold new history of South Korea's rapid development. By focusing on the experience of rural-to-urban migrants who built and lived in Seoul's shantytowns, Burge historicizes national development as a site of struggle with the urban poor...

In 1980, William H. Whyte published the findings from his revolutionary Street Life Project in The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces. Both the book and the accompanying film were instantly labeled classics, and launched a mini-revolution in the planning and study of public...

**One of Buzzfeed's 18 Best Nonfiction Books Of 2016** A lyrical, intelligent, authentic, and necessary look at the intersection of race and class in Chicago, a Great American City In this intelligent and highly important narrative, Chicago-native Natalie Moore shines a light on contemporary...

Consider your surroundings. Maybe you're in a house or in an apartment building. Maybe you're at a desk in an office building, or in a café looking out on a lively main street. The urban landscape is not simply the backdrop to your life....

A manifesto--and a field guide--for a new dawn of natural history, practiced by community scientists in their own urban jungle. Imagine taking your smartphone-turned-microscope to an empty lot and discovering a rare mason bee that builds its nest in empty snail shells. Or a...

NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE - Through the "revelatory and gut-wrenching" (Associated Press) stories of five Atlanta families, this landmark work of journalism exposes a new and troubling trend--the dramatic rise of the working homeless in cities across America "An exceptional feat...

ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES AND THE ATLANTIC'S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR - ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR - Through the "revelatory and gut-wrenching" (Associated Press) stories of five Atlanta families, this landmark work of journalism exposes...

Twentieth anniversary edition of a landmark book that cataloged a vibrant but disappearing neighborhood in New York City In the two decades that preceded the original publication of Times Square Red, Times Square Blue, Forty-second Street, then the most infamous street in America, was...

"Raffish and spirited . . . a nonconformist cri de coeur . . . Usually, comparisons to Bourdain are fatuous. This time it's accurate . . . It's been a long time since I've read so good and rowdy a memoir about blue-collar work."...

A muckraking history of San Diego that covers the city's historically recent shift from politically conservative to politically progressive while also outlining a new cast of right-wing villains and tenacious activists fighting for social justice. "Behind the luminous veneer of San Diego, there is...

TENTH ANNIVERSARY EDITIONWINNER OF THE GREEN PRIZE FOR SUSTAINABLE LITERATURE Updated with 100+ pages of new material and a foreword by Janette Sadik-Khan The bestselling urban planning book of the past decade, translated into seven languages, Walkable City has changed the conversation on community...

Blending travelogue, memoir, and environmental reportage, Walking Chicago's Coast takes readers on an urban journey. Michael McColly begins his walk at his far-North Side Chicago apartment and proceeds for two long days along the shore of Lake Michigan to the Indiana Dunes National Park....

Ogling, catcalling, wolf-whistling: such everyday intrusions from male strangers have greeted American women from their first forays into urban space. Watching the Girls Go By is the first book-length history of the phenomenon we know today as street harassment. Spanning more than a century,...

A WASHINGTON POST BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR Based on an unprecedented eighteen-year study, the center of this riveting book are three engaging streetwise brothers who provide powerful testimony to the exigencies of life lived on the social and economic margins. With profound lessons...

LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD - A "vivid and frank" (NPR) account of the crack cocaine era and a community's ultimate resilience, told through a cast of characters whose lives illuminate the dramatic rise and fall of the epidemic "A master class in...

An anthology about moving through the world on foot - as a woman.Women, Walking explores the broad spectrum of women's experiences and perspectives on walking, from everyday strolls that let the mind breathe to ambitious journeys that test courage and resolve. Co-edited by Zahra...