Books like Mannahatta by Eric W. Sanderson

A scholarly examination of Robert Moses, the powerful New York City planner whose initiatives shaped the city’s infrastructure and symbolized the concentration of municipal authority.

Terry Tempest Williams celebrates America’s national parks in a lyrical blend of memoir, natural history, and social critique, showcasing twelve iconic landscapes and the profound connection between wild lands and the American soul.

"An epic and riveting history of New York City on the edge of disaster--and an anatomy of the politics of austerity that continues to shape the world today. When the news broke in 1975 that New York City was on the brink of fiscal collapse, few believed it was possible: how could the capital of the financial world go bankrupt? And yet the city was billions of dollars--maybe twelve, maybe fourteen, no one even really knew how much--in the red. Bankers and politicians alike seized upon the situation as evidence that social liberalism, which New York famously exemplified, was doomed to failure--and promised apocalyptic scenarios if the city didn't fire thousands of workers, freeze wages, and slash social services. In this vivid, gripping account, historian Kim Phillips-Fein tells the remarkable story of the crisis that engulfed the city, forever transforming the largest metropolis in the United States and reshaping ideas about government throughout the country. In doing so, she brings to life a radically different New York, the legendarily decrepit city of the 1970s. Drawing on never-before-used archival sources as well as interviews with key players in the crisis, Phillips-Fein guides us through the hairpin turns and sudden reversals that brought New York City to the edge of bankruptcy--and kept it from going over. At once a sweeping history of some of the most tumultuous times in the city's past, a colorful portrait of the unwieldy mechanics of municipal government, and an origin story of the politics of austerity, Fear City is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the resurgent fiscal conservatism of today."--

W.D. Patterson, The Saturday Review: "Thoreau had his New England pond; Joseph Wood Krutch, his Arizona desert. And in both cases the reader should be a happier, wiser and better person because of the books these two philosophers of nature wrote out of their intimate observation of their immediate environment. The Voice of the Desert is a memorable book not only about the violent extremes of life in the desert, but about man's own relation with nature and the universe." This book explores the rich, intriguing, unexpected variety of life in the desert of America's Southwest. It is both for lovers of natural history and for those who enjoy the ruminations of a wise mind. Thus the result of this adventure with the natural wonders of the desert is a joyful, wise and witty credo by a man who knows that the proper study of mankind extends to all of nature. The delightful book - scholarly and informed though it is - is first of all a product of the exuberant enthusiasm that only a convert can bring to his subject. Joseph Wood Krutch came to the desert in his middle years - a man of letters who had spent his entire adult life in the cities and countryside of the Northeast. He found that the desert was exactly right for him - that he was healthier and happier in its bright, dry air than ever before. So he settled in Tucson and began inquiring into the habits of other creatures who were, like himself, at home in the desert. From the particular to the general, from the sublime to the ridiculous, Krutch investigates the desert that surrounds him and its inhabitants. He has extraordinary faculty for making even such things as cacti and toadlets endearing - though he is never a sentimentalist. Here, then, is his philosophy of the desert, woven from myriad facts and observations. He is an individualist who does not go along with certain theories current today about regimentation, and this combination of fresh, unjaundiced perception transmitted through his fine and lucid prose, make The Voice of the Desert and articulate delight. Whether is he talking of creatures - the roadrunner, the Dipo, the kangaroo rat, the tarantula - or of plants, he does so as an interested companion who must also adapt in order to exist in what many people consider difficult and unpleasant surroundings.

Green Metropolis explores seven iconic New York City green spaces, from historically significant forests to engineered parks, detailing their natural origins, human interventions, and roles in urban ecological preservation.