sites : books : films

sites

My favorite Web sites, in no particular order:

The Merchant's House Museum
A superb 1830s Greek Revival town house that is in a remarkable state of preservation both outside and in, lovingly cared for by a dedicated staff.

David Sucher's City Comforts Blog
The best blog on issues related to urban design. I have been a "guest blogger." Also, don't miss David's indispensable book on urban design, City Comforts: How to Build an Urban Village.

Amy Langfield's New York Notebook
Smart and genial commentary on life in New York, including my own Brooklyn.

Amy Langfield's New Yorkology
Amy's other site has huge amounts of information to aid New Yorkers and visitors to the city alike. Updated almost every day, and well-indexed so you can find what you need. It has become one of the few essential New York sites.

Kevin Walsh's Forgotten New York
A site that is impossible not to fall in love with.

Searchblog
One of the most consistently interesting and original voices in Blogland. She writes searchingly and soulfully of her battle against depression, a disease that, the reader is certain, will prove no match for her scintillating intelligence.

Dianne Durante's Forgotten Delights
An excellent site on New York City's public sculpture. And check out Dianne's book, Forgotten Delights: The Producers. She has a new book on public sculpture forthcoming from New York University Press.

Myra Alperson's Noshwalks
Myra's walking tours focus on New York City's infinite variety of cuisine. And check out her book, Nosh New York.

Joseph Brennan
Passionately precise information on abandoned New York City subway stations...and the Bee Gees.

The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit

Nikos Salingaros
From a mathematician comes some of the best thinking about architecture.

Patrick Connors
My favorite contemporary painter.

Virginia Postrel's Dynamist Blog
Author of The Substance of Style. (Go here to read my review of this fascinating book.)

James Howard Kunstler
Author of The Geography of Nowhere, Home from Nowhere, and The Long Emergency. Be sure to read Kunstler's interview with Jane Jacobs.

I believe that the truth of the universe resides exactly halfway between Virginia Postrel and James Howard Kunstler.

Mary Campbell Gallagher's Big Cities, Big Boxes Blog
No one more eloquently or more passionately states the case that "big box" stores are deadly for cities.

Ray Sawhill's Wiggle Room
Denis Dutton calls Ray "a writer of extraordinary gifts, one of the finest critics of his generation."

The Crumb Museum
I think Robert Crumb was not merely a great illustrator and cartoonist, but one of the great American artists of our time.

Carfree Cities

Timeline of James Joyce's Life
I am fascinated by timelines (as my students know), and believe that the art of making timelines will find its fulfillment on the Web. (Stay tuned for my own forays in that direction.) Here is an excellent example of what is possible without resorting to the whiz-bang special-effects that are the undoing of far too many Web sites.

Arts and Letters Daily
My favorite site on the World Wide Web. (Pieces by me show up here from time to time.)

Artsjournal
Like Arts & Letters Daily, an indispensable daily site.

London Tube Map with Walklines
I love subways, and I love maps. I believe the secrets of the universe will be unlocked when someone designs the perfect subway map. This guy's leading the way.

Subway Maps of the World
This site collects every known current subway map, from Adana to Zurich. What joy!

Bill Thayer's Gazetteer of Italy
An amazing site. The World Wide Web exists in order to provide an outlet for the irrepressibly intelligent whose passion overflows what would be likely or even possible to put in print. Check out all this guy's links to his other work. So who is Bill Thayer? He is "a simultaneous interpreter (French/English) specializing in mechanical engineering and the financial markets." He just happens to have a passion for, well, many things, including a passion for sharing his passions through a dauntingly voluminous set of Web sites.

Walford Web
The ultimate site for fans of the BBC soap opera East Enders.

New York City Restaurant Inspection Information
Most restaurants have some health-code violations. They get fixed, and life goes on. But what I like about perusing this site is finding out what restaurants have no violations. I patronize those restaurants, because business owners who take that kind of pride in their work, and who care about their customers' well-being, are business owners who will get my hard-earned money. I'm also fascinated by the diversity of restaurants without violations. Such restaurants range from four-star French restaurants in midtown to hole-in-the-wall Chinese takeaways in Bushwick. It's all a question of pride–not money. Similarly, restaurants with egregious violations (e.g. Carnegie Deli) do not deserve my–or anyone's–patronage.

John Singer Sargent Virtual Gallery
If you like Sargent (I do), you will like this very deep site.

Elliott Banfield
One of my favorite contemporary illustrators, with a deceptively simple but exceptionally rich web site with great images and honest commentary.

Samuel Pepys, Blogger
If Pepys were alive today, he'd be a blogger. On this site, someone posts entries–hyperlinked and annotated–from Pepys's diaries on the corresponding dates. A brilliant idea, a wonderful site.

Ship of Fools: The Magazine of Christian Unrest
This British Web-zine often has entertaining (yes, entertaining) articles on contemporary religious practices. But by far its best section is "Mystery Worshipper." These are readers' detailed reports on church services they have attended around the world. The reports must answer specific questions, such as "Was your pew comfortable?" and "On a scale of 1-10, how good was the preacher?" and "Was the worship stiff-upper-lip, happy clappy, or what?" (In answer to the last, the Mystery Worshipper who attended New York's St. Thomas, on Fifth Avenue and 53rd Street, last year said: "It was extremely formal anglo-catholic, so very dignified and beautiful. Almost perfect in my opinion. The great procession at the beginning of the service was so beautifully executed that it had my hair standing on end.") Sometimes the reports are moving; often they are very funny. It's a great resource for those of us, religious or agnostic, who not only love the architecture of churches, but feel that in order to appreciate it, it must be seen "in action."

Zoot
This is my all-time favorite piece of Windows software. (Nothing can beat my all-time favorite, which was Lotus Agenda, on the DOS platform. Alas, those good old days are gone.) Not everyone needs Zoot. Not everyone can even figure out how to use it. But if you need it, you'll figure it out. And even though you will soon start bitching about what it can't do (like rich text), you will nonetheless find it a profound adjunct to your brain. A couple of articles on Zoot are worth reading. One is by the well-known journalist James Fallows, a passionate Zooter (as we call ourselves). His piece on Zoot appeared in the Atlantic. Also check out Tom Mueller's excellent piece, from Hemispheres Magazine.

Palmgear
I am a passionate devotee of handheld computing. Currently, I own a Palm Tungsten E. I am always amazed by how many people who use handhelds (both of the Palm OS and Pocket PC varieties) for their scheduling and addresses never realize that these are full-fledged, powerful computers, suitable for writing, maintaining complex databases, and, well, most of what you can do on a laptop. Of course, in order to realize handhelds' potential, you need all kinds of add-on software. For the Palm OS, the best one-stop source of said software is Palmgear. (My own must-have software for the Palm includes the FitalyStamp text-entry system, the Wordsmith word processor, and iSilo, for viewing downloaded Web pages and for creating hypertext reference documents. I write my New York Sun columns on my Tungsten E using Wordsmith while riding the New York subway.

Project Gutenberg
Another thing you can do with your handheld is read classic literature on it. Don't get me wrong: I happen to think that ink on paper is the best means we have ever devised for communicating information and knowledge, and I am passionately devoted to the printed book. There are two reasons I like to download Edith Wharton, Henry James, Anthony Trollope, and Honoré de Balzac. One is the sheer portability. My Tungsten E, with an SD expansion card, makes it so I can carry several novels and other books in my sportcoat pocket. Second, and much more important, is that having these texts on one's desktop computer or on one's handheld makes the texts fully searchable. This is indispensable if you are writing about or teaching the books in question. Anyway, Project Gutenberg has scanned or keyed countless public-domain works, and in so doing laid claim to being one of the most important Web resources of all time.

Finally, everyone should read the philosopher Leszek Kolakowski's "How to Be a Conservative-Liberal-Socialist."

sites : books : films

books

Some favorite books on architecture and on New York City, in no particular order:

Lincoln at Cooper Union: The Speech That Made Abraham Lincoln President by Harold Holzer

New York Streetscapes: Tales of Manhattan's Significant Buildings and Landmarks by Christopher Gray and Suzanne Braley

Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center by Daniel Okrent

The Battle for New York: The City at the Heart of the American Revolution by Barnet Schecter

Divided Loyalties: How the American Revolution Came to New York by Richard M. Ketchum

Alexander Hamilton, American by Richard Brookhiser

Gentleman Rebel: Gouverneur Morris, the Rake Who Wrote the Constitution by Richard Brookhiser

The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan, the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America by Russell Shorto

The Architecture of Humanism: A Study in the History of Taste by Geoffrey Scott

A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction by Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa, Murray Silverstein, et al.

Dark Age Ahead by Jane Jacobs

New York 1880: Architecture and Urbanism in the Gilded Age by Robert A.M. Stern, Thomas Mellins, and David Fishman

New York 1960: Architecture and Urbanism Between the Second World War and the Bicentennial by Robert A.M. Stern, Thomas Mellins, and David Fishman

How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built by Stewart Brand

Man as Hero: The Human Figure in Western Art by Pierce Rice

The Golden City by Henry Hope Reed

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

Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace

A New Deal for New York by Mike Wallace

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning: 1977, Baseball, Politics, and the Battle for the Soul of a City by Jonathan Mahler

South Bronx Rising: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of an American City by Jill Jonnes

Celluloid Skyline: New York and the Movies by James Sanders

The Encyclopedia of New York City edited by Kenneth Jackson

Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States by Kenneth Jackson

Dvorak in Love: A Light-Hearted Dream by Josef Skvorecky

American Ground: Unbuilding the World Trade Center by William Langewiesche

The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States

A House on the Heights by Truman Capote

sites : books : films

films

Some favorite films having to do with New York City, in no particular order:

The Age of Innocence by Martin Scorsese (DVD)

The Heiress by William Wyler (DVD)

My Man Godfrey by Gregory La Cava (DVD)

The World of Henry Orient by George Roy Hill (DVD)

Life with Father by Michael Curtiz (DVD)

Holiday by George Cukor (VHS)

Yankee Doodle Dandy by Michael Curtiz (DVD)

Bells Are Ringing by Vincente Minnelli (VHS)

Sweet Smell of Success by Alexander Mackendrick

Hannah and Her Sisters by Woody Allen

The Lost Weekend by Billy Wilder

The Apartment by Billy Wilder

Manhattan by Woody Allen

The Clock by Vincente Minnelli (VHS)

Easy Living by Mitchell Leisen (VHS)

The Palm Beach Story by Preston Sturges (VHS)

North by Northwest by Alfred Hitchcock (DVD)

Breakfast at Tiffany's by Blake Edwards (DVD)

New York: A Documentary Film by Ric Burns (DVD)

Brooklyn Bridge by Ken Burns (DVD)

9/11 by Gédéon Naudet and Jules Naudet (DVD)

Metropolitan by Whit Stillman (VHS)

The Last Days of Disco by Whit Stillman (DVD)
        
Desk Set by Walter Lang (DVD)

Summer of Sam by Spike Lee (DVD)

Smoke by Wayne Wang

The Squid and the Whale by Noah Baumbach

(Both Smoke and The Squid and the Whale are set in Park Slope, Brooklyn, where I live.)

Capote by Bennett Miller

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