Books for the new urbanists
Discover essential reading for new urbanists with our curated book list, featuring insightful works like Collapse by Jared Diamond, The Geography of Nowhere by James Howard Kunstler, and Cadillac Desert—exploring history, urban design, and the forces shaping sustainable cities.
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Water Wars
by Diane Raines Ward
In this beautiful first novel, set on the Flathead Reservation of Montana in the 1940s, Earling traces the youth and young adulthood of Louise White Elk and the men who try to win her heart and soul.
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The Mystery of Capital
by Hernando De Soto
In the West we've forgotten that creating this system is also what allowed people everywhere to leverage property into wealth.
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Geography Of Nowhere
by James Howard Kunstler
Argues that much of what surrounds Americans is depressing, ugly, and unhealthy; and traces America's evolution from a land of village commons to a man-made landscape that ignores nature and human needs.
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Diet for a New America
by John Robbins
How your food choices afffect your health, happiness, and the future of life on earth.
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Cadillac Desert
by Marc Reisner
“I’ve been thinking a lot about Cadillac Desert in the past few weeks, as the rain fell and fell and kept falling over California, much of which, despite the pouring heavens, seems likely to remain in the grip of a severe drought. Reisner anticipated this moment. He worried that the West’s success with irrigation could be a mirage — that it took water for granted and didn’t appreciate the precariousness of our capacity to control it.” – Farhad Manjoo, The New York Times, January 20,2023 "The definitive work on the West's water crisis." --Newsweek The story of the American West is the story of a relentless quest for a precious resource: water. It is a tale of rivers diverted and dammed, of political corruption and intrigue, of billion-dollar battles over water rights, of ecological and economic disaster. In his landmark book, Cadillac Desert, Marc Reisner writes of the earliest settlers, lured by the promise of paradise, and of the ruthless tactics employed by Los Angeles politicians and business interests to ensure the city's growth. He documents the bitter rivalry between two government giants, the Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, in the competition to transform the West. Based on more than a decade of research, Cadillac Desert is a stunning expose and a dramatic, intriguing history of the creation of an Eden--an Eden that may only be a mirage. This edition includes a new postscript by Lawrie Mott, a former staff scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, that updates Western water issues over the last two decades, including the long-term impact of climate change and how the region can prepare for the future.
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The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
by Thomas S. Kuhn
Thomas S. Kuhn's classic book is now available with a new index.
