London Under
The Secret History Beneath the Streets
Written by Peter Ackroyd

Format: Trade Paperback, 240 pages
Publisher: Anchor
On Sale: November 13, 2012
Price: $15.00
ISBN: 978-0-307-47378-3 (0-307-47378-3)

In this vividly descriptive short study, Peter Ackroyd tunnels down through the geological layers of London, meeting the creatures that dwell in darkness and excavating the lore and mythology beneath the surface.

There is a Bronze Age trackway below the Isle of Dogs, Anglo-Saxon graves rest under St. Pauls, and the... Read more >

London Under
The Secret History Beneath the Streets
Written by Peter Ackroyd

Format: Hardcover, 240 pages
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
On Sale: November 1, 2011
Price: $25.00
ISBN: 978-0-385-53150-4 (0-385-53150-8)

London Under is a wonderful, atmospheric, imagina­tive, oozing short study of everything that goes on under London, from original springs and streams and Roman amphitheaters to Victorian sewers, gang hideouts, and modern tube stations. The depths below are hot, warmer than the surface, and this book tunnels down through the geological... Read more >

Venice
Pure City
Written by Peter Ackroyd

Format: Trade Paperback, 432 pages
Publisher: Anchor
On Sale: October 25, 2011
Price: $21.00
ISBN: 978-0-307-47379-0 (0-307-47379-1)

Peter Ackroyd at his most magical and magisterial—a glittering, evocative, fascinating, story-filled portrait of Venice, the ultimate city.

The Venetians’ language and way of thinking set them aside from the rest of Italy. They are an island people, linked to the sea and to the tides rather than the land. This... Read more >

Venice
Pure City
Written by Peter Ackroyd

Format: Hardcover, 416 pages
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
On Sale: November 2, 2010
Price: $37.50
ISBN: 978-0-385-53152-8 (0-385-53152-4)

The Venetians’ language and way of thinking set them aside from the rest of Italy. They are an island people, linked to the sea and to the tides rather than the land. This latest work from the incomparable Peter Ackroyd, like a magic gondola, transports its readers to that sensual and... Read more >

Cancer in the Community
Class and Medical Authority
Written by Martha Balshem

Format: Trade Paperback, 192 pages
Publisher: Smithsonian Books
On Sale: August 17, 1993
Price: $16.95
ISBN: 978-1-56098-251-7 (1-56098-251-9)

Focusing on deep conflicts between the medical establishment and the working class, Martha Balshem chronicles a health education project in “Tannerstown,” a pseudonym for a blue-collar neighborhood in northeast Philadelphia.

“Balshem conducted anthropological research as a means of exploring the limitations and possibilities of community-based approaches to cancer prevention. . . ... Read more >

Grand Avenues
The Story of Pierre Charles L'Enfant, the French Visionary Who Designed Washington, D.C.
Written by Scott W. Berg

Format: Trade Paperback, 352 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: February 12, 2008
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-1-4000-7622-2 (1-4000-7622-6)

In 1791, shortly after the United States won its independence, George Washington personally asked Pierre Charles L’Enfant—a young French artisan turned American revolutionary soldier who gained many friends among the Founding Fathers—to design the new nation's capital. L’Enfant approached this task with unparalleled vigor and passion; however, his imperious and unyielding... Read more >

When a Heart Turns Rock Solid
The Lives of Three Puerto Rican Brothers On and Off the Streets
Written by Timothy Black

Format: Trade Paperback, 464 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: August 24, 2010
Price: $16.95
ISBN: 978-0-307-45487-4 (0-307-45487-8)

Winner of the Mirra Komarovsky Award
Winner of the Association for Humanist Sociology Book Award
Finalist for the Puerto Rican Studies Association Book Award
A Washington Post Best Book of the Year

This provocative and compelling book examines how jobs, schools, the streets, and prisons have shaped the lives and choices of a generation... Read more >

Electric Universe
How Electricity Switched on the Modern World
Written by David Bodanis

Format: Trade Paperback, 320 pages
Publisher: Broadway Books
On Sale: February 28, 2006
Price: $15.00
ISBN: 978-0-307-33598-2 (0-307-33598-4)

Winner, 2006 Aventis General Prize, which celebrates the very best in popular science writing for adult readers.

In Electric Universe, David Bodanis weaves tales of romance, divine inspiration, and fraud through a lucid account of the invisible force that permeates our universe. In these pages the virtuoso scientists who plumbed the secrets... Read more >

Behind the Beautiful Forevers
Life, death, and hope in a Mumbai undercity
Written by Katherine Boo

Format: Hardcover, 288 pages
Publisher: Random House
On Sale: February 7, 2012
Price: $27.00
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6755-8 (1-4000-6755-3)

Winner of the National Book Award, Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and American Academy of Arts and Letters Literature Award

Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award
Shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize


Selected for Common Reading at:
Michigan State University
Northeastern University
Skidmore College
University of Delaware
Montgomery Bell Academy


From Pulitzer Prize-winner... Read more >

Fist Stick Knife Gun
A Personal History of Violence
Written by Geoffrey Canada
Illustrated by Jamar Nicholas

Format: Trade Paperback, 144 pages
Publisher: Beacon Press
On Sale: September 14, 2010
Price: $14.00
ISBN: 978-0-8070-4449-0 (0-8070-4449-0)

A 2011 Great Graphic Novel for Teens (YALSA)

Long before President Barack Obama praised his work as “an all-encompassing, all-hands-on-deck anti-poverty effort that is literally saving a generation of children,” and First Lady Michelle Obama called him “one of my heroes,” Geoffrey Canada was a small and scared boy growing up in... Read more >

Reaching Up for Manhood
Transforming the Lives of Boys in America
Written by Geoffrey Canada

Format: Trade Paperback, 176 pages
Publisher: Beacon Press
On Sale: December 10, 1998
Price: $16.00
ISBN: 978-0-8070-2317-4 (0-8070-2317-5)

From a troubled youth navigating the mean streets of the South Bronx to an inspiring educational activist who evokes praise from the likes of President Barack Obama, Geoffrey Canada has made a remarkable personal journey that cemented his dedication to underserved youth. His award-winning work was featured in Davis Guggenheim’s documentary... Read more >

The Power Broker
Robert Moses and the Fall of New York
Written by Robert A. Caro

Format: Trade Paperback, 1344 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: July 12, 1975
Price: $25.00
ISBN: 978-0-394-72024-1 (0-394-72024-5)

This is Caro's examination of how one man, Robert Moses, shaped the politics, the physical structure, and even the problems of urban decline in the city and state of New York.

Winner of both the Pulitzer and Francis Parkman prizes, The Power Broker tells the hidden story behind the shaping (and mis-shaping)... Read more >

Hollowing Out the Middle
The Rural Brain Drain and What It Means for America
Written by Patrick J. Carr and Maria J. Kefalas

Format: Trade Paperback, 256 pages
Publisher: Beacon Press
On Sale: July 27, 2010
Price: $17.00
ISBN: 978-0-8070-0614-6 (0-8070-0614-9)

In 2001, with funding from the MacArthur Foundation, sociologists Patrick J. Carr and Maria J. Kefalas moved to Iowa to understand the rural brain drain and the exodus of young people from America’s countryside. Articles and books–notably Richard Florida’s The Rise of the Creative Class–celebrate the migration of highly productive and... Read more >

Everyday Urbanism
Expanded
Edited by John Chase, Margaret Crawford and Kaliski John

Format: Trade Paperback, 224 pages
Publisher: The Monacelli Press
On Sale: December 23, 2008
Price: $45.00
ISBN: 978-1-58093-201-1 (1-58093-201-0)

First published in 1999, Everyday Urbanism has become a classic in the discussion of cities and real life. Within the context of history, theory, and practice of urban design, the essays explore the city as a social entity that must be responsive to daily routines and neighborhood concerns and offer both... Read more >

I Don't Wish Nobody to Have a Life Like Mine
Tales of Kids in Adult Lockup
Written by David Chura

Format: Trade Paperback
Publisher: Beacon Press
On Sale: February 22, 2011
Price: $14.00
ISBN: 978-0-8070-0123-3 (0-8070-0123-6)

Selected as a 2011 University Press Book for Public and Secondary School Libraries
•Rated O - Outstanding

A veteran teacher gives an “inside” view of the lives of juveniles sentenced as adults

David Chura taught high school in a New York county penitentiary for ten years—five days a week, seven hours a day. In... Read more >

Made in Detroit

Written by Paul Clemens

Format: Trade Paperback, 256 pages
Publisher: Anchor
On Sale: October 10, 2006
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-1-4000-7596-6 (1-4000-7596-3)

A New York Times Notable Book

A powerfully candid memoir about growing up white in Detroit and the conflicted point of view it produced.

Raised in Detroit during the '70s, '80s, and '90s, Paul Clemens saw his family growing steadily isolated from its surroundings: white in a predominately black city, Catholic in an... Read more >

Punching Out
One Year in a Closing Auto Plant
Written by Paul Clemens

Format: Trade Paperback, 288 pages
Publisher: Anchor
On Sale: January 17, 2012
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-0-7679-2693-5 (0-7679-2693-5)

An elegy—angry, funny, and powerfully detailed—about the slow death of a Detroit auto plant and an American way of life.

How does a country dismantle a century’s worth of its industrial heritage? To answer that question, Paul Clemens investigates the 2006 closing of one of America’s most potent symbols: a Detroit... Read more >

Public Art for Public Schools

Written by Michele Cohen
Photographed by Stan Ries
Foreword by Michael Bloomberg

Format: Hardcover, 240 pages
Publisher: The Monacelli Press
On Sale: April 14, 2009
Price: $50.00
ISBN: 978-1-58093-215-8 (1-58093-215-0)

What makes a good schoolhouse? Beyond the basics of classrooms and library, a good school inspires students and teachers and enhances the learning environment through its architecture and its art. Nowhere is this principle better demonstrated than in the New York City school system, the largest in the United States, where... Read more >

The Heart of the World

Written by Nik Cohn

Format: Trade Paperback, 380 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: March 2, 1993
Price: $23.00
ISBN: 978-0-679-74437-5 (0-679-74437-1)

“This is a compelling and highly original journey up Broadway from the Battery to Times Square. The title comes from an old song about this famous street of broken dreams and promises. Two of Broadway’s unique inhabitants—a punk Soviet emigre and a cross-dressing hooker serve as guides. Along the way we... Read more >

Remembering 9/11

Written by Martha Cooper

Format: Trade Paperback, 80 pages
Publisher: Mark Batty Publisher
On Sale: July 26, 2011
Price: $10.95
ISBN: 978-1-935613-09-1 (1-935613-09-X)

The tenth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York City is a sobering one, marking a fundamental shift in how Americans viewed the world and how the world viewed America. But, in the wake of devastation and loss, the true spirit of New York City dusted off the... Read more >

Satan's Circus
Murder, Vice, Police Corruption, and New York's Trial of the Century
Written by Mike Dash

Format: Trade Paperback, 464 pages
Publisher: Broadway Books
On Sale: August 26, 2008
Price: $16.00
ISBN: 978-1-4000-5472-5 (1-4000-5472-9)

They called it Satan’s Circus—a square mile of Midtown Manhattan where vice ruled, sin flourished, and depravity danced in every doorway. At the turn of the twentieth century, it was a place where everyone from the chorus girls to the beat cops was on the take and where bad boys became... Read more >

Living and Dying in Brick City
An E.R. Doctor Returns Home
Written by Sampson Davis and Lisa Frazier Page

Format: Hardcover, 256 pages
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
On Sale: February 12, 2013
Price: $25.00
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6994-1 (1-4000-6994-7)

A riveting personal exploration of the healthcare crisis facing inner-city communities, written by an emergency room physician who grew up in the very neighborhood he is now serving

Sampson Davis is best known as one of three friends from inner-city Newark who made a pact in high school to become doctors. Their... Read more >

The Progress Paradox
How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse
Written by Gregg Easterbrook

Format: Trade Paperback, 400 pages
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
On Sale: November 9, 2004
Price: $14.95
ISBN: 978-0-8129-7303-7 (0-8129-7303-8)

In The Progress Paradox, Gregg Easterbrook draws upon three decades of wide-ranging research and thinking to make the persuasive assertion that almost all aspects of Western life have vastly improved in the past century--yet today, according to research and anecdotal evidence, most men and women feel less 'happy' than in previous... Read more >

Zeitoun

Written by Dave Eggers

Format: Trade Paperback, 368 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: June 15, 2010
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-0-307-38794-3 (0-307-38794-1)

A New York Times Notable Book
An O, The Oprah Magazine Terrific Read of the Year
A Huffington Post Best Book of the Year
A New Yorker Favorite Book of the Year
A Chicago Tribune Favorite Nonfiction Book of the Year
A Kansas City Star Best Book of the Year
A San... Read more >

The Great Inversion and the Future of the American City

Written by Alan Ehrenhalt

Format: Trade Paperback, 288 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: January 22, 2013
Price: $16.95
ISBN: 978-0-307-47437-7 (0-307-47437-2)

Eye-opening and thoroughly engaging, this is an indispensible look at American urban/suburban society and its future.

In The Great Inversion, Alan Ehrenhalt, one of our leading urbanologists, reveals how the roles of America’s cities and suburbs are changing places—young adults and affluent retirees moving in, while immigrants and the less affluent are... Read more >