Two political titans forge a modern city and a vibrant public sector in this history of strong leadership at a time of national crisis. City of Ambition is a brilliant history of the New Deal and its role in the making of modern New York City. The story of a remarkable collaboration between Franklin Roosevelt and Fiorello La Guardia, this is a case study in creative political leadership in the midst of a devastating depression. Roosevelt and La Guardia were an odd couple: patrician president and immigrant mayor, fireside chat and tabloid cartoon, pragmatic Democrat and reform Republican. But together, as leaders of America’s two largest governments in the depths of the Great Depression, they fashioned a route to recovery for the nation and the master plan for a great city. Roosevelt and his “Brain Trust”—shrewd, energetic advisors such as Harold Ickes and Harry Hopkins—sought to fight the Depression by channeling federal resources through America’s cities and counties. La Guardia had replaced Tammany Hall cronies with policy experts, such as the imperious Robert Moses, who were committed to a strong public sector. The two leaders worked closely together. La Guardia had a direct line of communication with FDR and his staff, often visiting Washington carrying piles of blueprints. Roosevelt relied on the mayor as his link to the nation’s cities and their needs. The combination was potent. La Guardia’s Gotham became a laboratory for New Deal reform. Roosevelt’s New Deal transformed city initiatives into major programs such as the Works Progress Administration, which changed the physical face of the United States. Together they built parks, bridges, and schools; put the unemployed to work; and strengthened the Progressive vision of government as serving the public purpose. Today everyone knows the FDR Drive as a main route to La Guardia Airport. The intersection of steel and concrete speaks to a pair of dynamic leaders whose collaboration lifted a city and a nation. Here is their story.

"Cities of Ambition asks why some cities make more of their assets and resources and do better than expected. It explores the landscape of ambitious cities across Europe and assesses their special qualities looking at the pioneers and pathbreakers and how they overcome obstacles and realized their aims. It asks why cities like Barcelona, Malmo and Copenhagen or Eindhoven, Torino and Manchester are so admired as well as smaller places like Freiburg, Nantes or Umea. The central messags are: 'try to be yourself', 'identify and orchestrate your unique resources' 'be willing to look at things afresh', 'be open to ideas', 'acquire and value the new skills fit for the times, such as being a connector or orchestrator', 'connect across the world and become globally fluent', 'develop a leadership grouping', and 'do not think you can do it on your own - collaborate and partner with others'.

City of Ambition, published to accompany a Whitney Museum exhibition, takes its title from the famous 1910 Alfred Stieglitz photograph of New York's then-burgeoning skyline. Both the book and exhibition explore the creative ferment of the first half of the century, seeking to reveal and revel in the notion of ambition as an idealized source of energy and inspiration. Paintings, prints, sculptures, and photographs by some of America's most renowned artist - Stieglitz, Georgia O'Keeffe, Man Ray, Edward Hopper, Diane Arbus, Jackson Pollock, and many more - provide a broad overview of expressive interpretations. This magnificently illustrated catalogue includes a preface and introductions to each plate section by Whitney Museum curator Elisabeth Sussman and Corey Keller. In addition, the volume includes a selection of reprinted poems, excerpts, and lyrics by well-known writers, and a lively essay on New York and its artists by Brendan Gill.

Founded in 1851 as a four-cabin outpost named "New York Pretty-Soon," Seattle has long struggled with an identity crisis. From a nearly lawless port, to a sedate, conventional company town defined by Boeing Aircraft, to an accessible paradise for artists and recovering urbanites, Seattle repeatedly tried and failed to become bigger, wealthier, more like "major league" cities. In the late 1980s, Seattle's time suddenly arrived. Microsoft, Amazon, Starbucks, McCaw Cellular/AT&T Wireless, and dozens of local dot.com startups began to drive a booming national economy. Seattle became a city of instant millionaires and brand name shopping, skyscrapers and sports franchises-- the place everyone wanted to visit, topping lists of America's "most desirable" cities. But with such wealth came consequences: overdevelopment, paralyzing traffic, racial and class divisions, and a street population of teenagers discarded by the new culture, whose rage and disaffection fueled the rise of bands such as Nirvana. Striving to reach its ambitions, Seattle seemed to be losing the struggle for its soul. And when it hosted the 1999 World Trade Organization convention, the city's conflicted personalities clashed, as violent riots by residents and a coalition of protestors left the downtown decimated and the nation transfixed by the spectacle of globalization gone wrong. In Seattle and the Demons of Ambition, Fred Moody uses his own background as a native son, along with wide-ranging encounters with others, to trace the growing pains of the city he loves. Profiling Bill Gates and never-quite-champion football coach Chuck Knox, a pair of ambitious entrepreneurs and a homeless sculptor once profiled in the New Yorker, grunge music superstars and the preyed-upon children of the documentary "Streetwise," Moody offers a dramatic, entertaining, and insightful portrait of the city that defined economic and technological change in the America of the 1990s.

In the next two installments of the four-book arc that began with City Secrets, the tide has turned at the elite Canterwood Crest Academy….Will Sasha Silver dethrone Heather Fox and become the school’s Queen Bee? Packed with BFF scandal, lying roommates, secrets between teammates, and more, these are two of the most dramatic Canterwood books ever!

How can we understand the infinite variety of cities? Darran Anderson seems to exhaust all possibilities in this work of creative nonfiction. Drawing inspiration from Marco Polo and Italo Calvino, Anderson shows that we have much to learn about ourselves by looking not only at the cities we have built, but also at the cities we have imagined. Anderson draws on literature (Gustav Meyrink, Franz Kafka, Jaroslav Hasek, and James Joyce), but he also looks at architectural writings and works by the likes of Bruno Taut and Walter Gropius, Medieval travel memoirs from the Middle East, mid-twentieth-century comic books, Star Trek, mythical lands such as Cockaigne, and the works of Claude Debussy. Anderson sees the visionary architecture dreamed up by architects, artists, philosophers, writers, and citizens as wedded to the egalitarian sense that cities are for everyone. He proves that we must not be locked into the structures that exclude ordinary citizens--that cities evolve and that we can have input. As he says: "If a city can be imagined into being, it can be re-imagined as well.”

Winner, 2012 Sally Hacker Prize, Society for the History of Technology Hotel Dreams is a deeply researched and entertaining account of how the hotel's material world of machines and marble integrated into and shaped the society it served. Molly W. Berger offers a compelling history of the American hotel and how it captured the public's imagination as it came to represent the complex—and often contentious—relationship among luxury, economic development, and the ideals of a democratic society. Berger profiles the country's most prestigious hotels, including Boston's 1829 Tremont, San Francisco's world-famous Palace, and Chicago's enormous Stevens. The fascinating stories behind their design, construction, and marketing reveal in rich detail how these buildings became cultural symbols that shaped the urban landscape.