Home > Store > Books Login   Register     In this section - •  Posters •  Books •  Videos •  Gadgets Back to Store Books In partnership with Amazon.com, SkyscraperPage.com has assembled a great selection of books that we think you will enjoy.  From New York's skyscrapers to transportation and urbanism, there is something to choose for every skyscraper enthusiast. Every purchase through the store helps SkyscraperPage maintain the services it provides to the skyscraper enthusiast community.  Thanks for taking the time to check out this page and we sincerely appreciate your support! Jump to:  >Architecture  >Engineering  >Transportation  >Skyscrapers - General  >Skyscrapers of Chicago  >Skyscrapers of New York  >Urbanism Skyscrapers - General Skyscrapers: Structure and Design By Matthew Wells Drawing from construction in the past decade, Wells critiques 29 notable new skyscrapers, including a ski jump in Austria and a spirelike tower in Dublin, Ireland. Exhibiting no dominant aesthetic or engineering trait (except in East Asia, where the title for world's tallest building is avidly contested), the collection of structures draws Wells' analysis of each edifice's distinctive features and its compatibility with its neighborhood. Read more or Tall Buildings By Guy Nordenson Since the first skyscraper was erected a century ago, tall buildings have intrigued people everywhere. Today they are so commonplace that it is hard to imagine the modern landscape without them. But skyscrapers are more than relics of the 20th century; they have evolved, along with our technological, spatial and aesthetic needs, as the new urban landscape. Tall Buildings explores how the genre is being redefined for the 21st century, presenting a critical review of the current state of tall buildings, discussing structural inventions, programmatic innovations, and social and urbanistic implications. Read more or Skyscraper: Vertical Now By Eric Howeler No building type has the power to capture the imagination like the skyscraper, yet following 9/11, the future of the skyscraper has been called into question. The author presents convincing evidence that the future of tall buildings is as secure today as it was over 100 years ago. Described and accompanied by striking full-color photography are over fifty new skyscrapers that punctuate the skyline of major cities around the world. Read more or High-rise Manual By Johann Eisele and Ellen Kloft What constitutes a high-rise building? A high-rise is, in fact, any building with more than 9 storeys and not just those striking skyscrapers which shape modern city skylines. In the past architects who designed such structures used to be the exception but in the last 10 years more and more architectural offices have begun to focus on this type of building. However, the sheer complexity of designing and planning the construction of a high-rise as opposed to other building types requires a wealth of specialized experience and expertise. Read more or Skyscrapers By Andre Lepik Few buildings rivet our attention like skyscrapers. As the race to build higher and higher continues, these symbols of success and economic power dominate and reshape urban skylines across the globe. Opening with Chicago’s Reliance Building, built in 1894, and closing with plans for the Freedom Tower, which will be built on the site of the World Trade Center, eye-catching two to four page spreads in this up-to-date and comprehensive volume capture fifty of the world’s most important skyscrapers. Each building is breathtakingly photographed, and an accompanying text offers intriguing historical details, notes on construction, and engineering feats. Read more or Skyscrapers By Judith Dupre At first glance, Judith Dupré's Skyscrapers might appear to be just another coffee-table prop. Yes, the fact that it measures a good foot and a half might keep it off the average shelf, but its unusual size is not just a gimmick. This book does full-scale justice to the beautiful black-and-white photographs of some of the world's most famous skyscrapers. Organized chronologically, this is not a comprehensive guide but a selective survey: 50 of the most "significant" skyscrapers of the last century. From the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C., to the Kuningan Persada Tower in Jakarta, Indonesia, Skyscrapers is a fact lover's dream. Read more or Big and Green: Sustainable Skyscrapers for the Twentieth Century By David Gissen Cities operate as unnatural ecosystems. Buildings breathe in and out. They consume and waste resources. They foul the air. Now more architects and engineers are working with greater regard for the environmental consequences of big buildings. "Green architecture" seems incongruous: creating artificial places that somehow connect us better to the natural world, so is it trendy tokenism or sincere citizenship? This book surveys the field and assesses the state of sustainable civic and corporate architecture. Sleekly designed and generally informative, it presents a variety of building types and evolving technologies that allow massive construction projects to step more lightly on the earth. Read more or Skyscrapers: The New Millennium By John Zukowsky Skyscraper! The very word evokes a range of emotional responses, from fascination to fear, and, as we enter the third millennium, new trends in the evolution of this popular commercial building type are coming to the fore. This book primarily examines planned skyscrapers and projects under construction, as well as featuring some selected built projects, to show the latest developments in the skyscraper's form, character, and technology. Read more or Skyscrapers -- An Uban Type By Mario Campi & R. Benson It's all here, starting with the lady most popularly associated with the kick-off of the steel-skeletoned Skyscraper Century--Daniel Burnham's ever-elegant Flatiron Building at the confluence of Fifth Avenue and Broadway in New York City (1902)--and wrapping up with images of the models for such heady works in progress as an elliptical tower in Kuala Lumpur that looks like a giant incandescent shark fin rising up out of the landscape. In between, the book details the usual suspects (the Woolworth Building, the Empire State, Johnson Wax, 860/880 Lke Shore Drive Apartments, Lever House, the Transamerica Pyramid, the Sears Tower, the AT&T Building, and London's Canary Wharf Tower) and the unsung eroes (like New York's deco-era Barclay-Vesey Building, which pioneered the much-copied "ziggurat-style" stepped design to accommodate new laws to keep ever-taller buildings from blocking out natural light on the streets below) as well as the new contenders. Read more or 1001 Skyscrapers By Jeannie Meejin Yoon The world's love of skyscrapers is so great that architectural book publishers never will stop thinking of ways to create new books about them--as evidenced by this clever, colorful, and fun Filofax-shaped interactive number. It takes vertical shots of 27 of the world's most famous tall buildings; scales them all equally; cuts them into bottom, middle, and top; and, then, through the magic of a loose-leaf ring binder, allows you to flip around their various three parts to see, say, what New York's 1913 Woolworth Building--Cass Gilbert's legendary faux-Gothic "cathedral of commerce"--would look like with the base of its neighbor from a few blocks away, Emery Roth and Sons' 1972-3 World Trade Center (schizophrenic, to say the least)... or how Skidmore Owings & Merrill's 1969 Hancock Center in Chicago would look if it were topped off by the richly patterned minaret-like crowns of Cesar Pelli's twin Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur (a perfect geometric fit, actually (if not a stylistic stumper), thanks to the Hancock's ever-tapering shaft). The funny thing is that so many of the towers of the past few years look like Deco by LEGO, with their stepped-back stories and sexy chevron-like styling. Read more or Return to Top Skyscrapers of Chicago Building Blocks, The John Hancock Center By Yasmin Sabina Khan At once sleekly stylish and splendidly brutish, Chicago's John Hancock Center, which opened in 1969 and was created from plans by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill's Bruce Graham and the ingenious engineering of Fazlur Khan, remains the culminating totem of a decade of affluent Great Society bravado. That decade ended with America putting a man on the moon, but at a neat 100 stories, "Big John," as Chicagoans affectionately came to call the commercial/residential tower, wasn't much less of a feat in terms of colonizing the heavens. This trim volume is part of Princeton Architectural Press's very cool Building Blocks series on great edifices, which also showcases the Chapel of Ronchamp, Fallingwater, the Seagram Building, the Whitney Museum, and the TWA Terminal, among others. Read more or Sears Tower: A Building Book from the Chicago Architecture Foundation By Jay Pridmore The nation's largest retailer wanted the largest headquarters in the nation, and they got it. Designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), the 110-story anodized aluminum-clad Sears Tower occupies three acres. The bundled-tube construction allowed for more windows and more corner offices per square foot. The total area within the Tower is 4.4 million square feet; the Sky Deck on the 103rd floor offers tremendous views and welcomes more than 1 million visitors yearly. Read more or Return to Top Skyscrapers of New York Seagram Building By Ezra Stoller These new titles in the Building Blocks series showcase four more icons of modern architecture, as portrayed by renowned architectural photographer Ezra Stoller. Two buildings by Frank Lloyd Wright, Fallingwater and Taliesin West, Louis Kahn's Salk Institute, and Mies van der Rohe's Seagram Building are shown in original condition, with original furnishings, as the architects intended them to be seen. Wright's integration of architecture and landscape, Kahn's dramatic yet humane monumentality, and Mies's austere elegance are revealed and preserved in Stoller's classic compositions. Small, elegant, and affordable, each volume presents the photo-graphs that made these structures famous. Read more or The United Nations By Ezra Stoller The United Nations needs no introduction, but most people probably don't realize that the building itself is the product of a team of 11 design architects from as many countries (plus several other consultants from even more places), including French superstar Le Corbusier. It was as unprecedented an experiment in large-scale architectural modernism as it was in international governance. And although most readers know its exterior appearance, few are aware of its varied and often dramatic interior public spaces. The UN building is just one of the modernist icons that preeminent architectural photographer Ezra Stoller documented in a career that spanned more than half a century. Now retired, Stoller has been reassembling his work for permanent (rather than periodical) publication. Read more or The Landmarks of New York By Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel The Landmarks of New York is a definitive resource book on the architectural history of the city, documenting and illustrating more than 1100 buildings that have been accorded landmark status over the past forty years. The chronological organization gives the reader a sequential overview of the city’s architectural richness and diversity. The book presents a broad range of styles and building types-simple colonial farmhouses, churches, schools, libraries, Gilded Age mansions, and the great twentieth-century skyscrapers that are recognized throughout the world. Read more or New York Streetscapes: Tales of Manhattan's Significant Buildings and Landmarks By Christopher Gray Having once been called a "building genealogist" by a stranger, Gray is definitely something more than an architectural historian. His "Streetscapes" column for the New York Times has taken readers through the architectural history of Gotham for 15 years, and now his book will make that journey comprehensive and just as immediate. Winding from lower Manhattan to uptown, the vignettes present an image of a structure-sometimes a garden or viaduct or something besides a building-with a revealing short text. More than 300 black-and-white (often period) photographs depict the lavish and strange interiors and exteriors of the structures. Read more or The Chrysler Building By David Stravitz While buying some equipment from an elderly photographer, Stravitz, a designer and product developer who holds more than 100 patents and 400 copyrights, stumbled onto a collection of negatives taken by the commercial and industrial photographers Peyser & Patzig that chronicled the construction of the Chrysler Building, the art deco masterpiece on New York City's 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue. Introduced by New York Times "Streetscapes" columnist Christopher Grey, these 170 duotones-some lush and some grainy-begin with the lot's nondescript previous building, which was demolished by 1928, and continue through the massive girding of the uncompleted tower, swarmed over by teams of bricklayers and captured in long shots as it neared being "ready for occupancy in the Spring of 1930" (as one billboard reads)-a year or so ahead of the rival Empire State Building. Read more or City in the Sky: The Rise and Fall of the World Trade Center By James Glanz This is not a book only about September 11; the towers' collapse begins on number 236 of 337 pages of narrative text. New York Times reporters Glanz (science) and Lipton (metropolitan news) instead deliver a thoroughly absorbing account of how the World Trade Center developed from an embryonic 1939 World's Fair building to "a city in the sky, the likes of which the planet had never seen." In this lively page-turner, intensively researched and meticulously documented, a world of international trade, business history, litigation, architecture, engineering and forensics comes clear-a political and financial melodrama with more wheeling and dealing than Dallas, touched lightly with the comedic and haunted by tragedy. Read more or Rise of the New York Skyscraper: 1865 - 1913 By Sarah Bradford Landau & Carl W. Condit A confluence of technology (the elevator), social change (the increase in the number of office workers), and geology (a downtown limited in area by surrounding water) transformed New York City from an expanse of low buildings to a forest of skyscrapers. Landau, an art history professor at New York University, and Condit, a professor emeritus of art history at Northwestern, explore the development of the skyscraper from the 1868 Equitable Building, the first to use elevators for people rather than freight, to the Woolworth Building, which was called the "Cathedral of Commerce" and for which President Woodrow Wilson traveled to New York to activate the building's lights during its grand opening. Read more or Skyscraper Rivals By Daniel M. Abramson & Carol Willis Millions of visitors flock to New York each year to witness the excitement of Wall Street, famous for its shoulder-to-shoulder Deco towers jostling for prominence above the canyon like streets. Skyscraper Rivals is the first book to examine the architecture of Wall Street between the wars through an amazing array of contemporary and archival images and an informed discussion of the financial, geographical, and historical forces that shaped this district. The book focuses on the AIG Building—once known as the Cities Service Building—and three other major towers in the financial district, in their race to be the tallest, the most modern, and the most lavish. We meet the tycoons who paid for these structures, the architects who designed them, the workers who labored in them, and the artists and photographers who portrayed them. Read more or Return to Top Architecture What Style Is It?: A Guide to American Architecture By John C. Poppeliers & S. Allen Chambers Architectural style is defined as a definite type of architecture, distinguished by special characteristics of structure and ornament. This revised edition of What Style Is It? includes new sections on Neoclassical, Romanesque and Rustic Styles. It also provides more examples of how pure styles vary by geographic region across the US. * Includes sections on 25 of the most significant architectural styles including Early Colonial, Federal and Second Empire * More than 200 photos and line drawings make this a visually rich resource. 300f photos and drawings are new to this edition * A glossary offers quick access to architectural terms * Includes an added guide to using the Historical American Buildings Society online catalogue of more than 30,000 historic structures, giving access to more than 51,000 measured drawings, 156,000 photographs and more than 30,000 original historical reports More Info or Form Follows Finance: Skyscrapers and Skylines of New York and Chicago By Carol Willis The central theme of this well researched history of architecture, urban planning, and real estate is that in the design of office buildings, form, space, and money are all intricately bound up with one another. This convincing hypothesis is presented in the form of a comprehensive and comparative look at the skylines of two major turn-of-the-century cities, which are also two of the most illustrious American metropolises: Chicago and New York. What differentiates this book from other histories of the skyscraper is its emphasis on economics as the chief factor in the determination of form, as well as on municipal codes, land-use patterns, and zoning. It is also an urban history and an agile investigation into the forces that shaped the tallest buildings in America. It is fascinating to learn, for instance, how new formal solutions for office buildings emerged, exactly how the height of the Empire State Building was determined, and how economics contributed to the vast majority of these and other design decisions. More Info or Modern Architecture Since 1990 By William Curtis A comprehensive and balanced overview of modern architecture, this edition combines a clear general outline with masterly analysis and interpretation of individual buildings. The text includes much new knowledge and research and a fresh appreciation of regional identity and variety, including expanded and developed discussions of European, American and non-western traditions. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. More Info or Cleveland's Downtown Architecture By Shawn Patrick Hoefler Downtown Cleveland has many architectural landmarks that define this big, proud city on the lake. Most famous is Terminal Tower, the "grand dame" of Cleveland skyscrapers, which was the tallest office building outside of New York City from 1930 until 1967. Other notable high-rises such as the BP building, Key Tower (at 950 feet one of the tallest in the nation), and the new Federal Court House with its distinctive lighted cornice also dominate the cityís beautiful Lake Erie skyline. And then there are the details of the terra-cotta "stardust" motif on the exterior of the Standard Building, the extensive metal decorative work inside the gargoyle-encircled atrium of The Arcade, and the immense stained-glass dome of the Cleveland Trust Rotunda. More Info or Return to Top Engineering Construction Technology for Tall Buildings By Michael Y. L. Chew and Michael Chew Yit Lin A text introducing the latest construction practices and processes for tall buildings, acquainting the reader with the methods, materials, equipment, and systems needed for this type of work. Also discusses the construction sequence and the merits and limitations of the systems presented. Read more or Steel, Concrete and Composite Material of Tall Buildings Author: Bungale S. Taranath Thoroughly updated, this superbly illustrated handbook provides a uniquely practical perspective on all aspects of steel, concrete, and composite use in the design of tall buildings. It alerts professionals to the latest codes and ANSI standards and includes dozens of case studies of important buildings throughout the world, providing in-depth insight into why and how specific structural system choices were made. It also discusses recent studies of seismic vulnerability. . .the effect of wind and seismic forces on design decisions. . .the use of lateral bracing concepts and gravity-based systems. . .computer modeling techniques that forecast the response of buildings to various forces. . .and much more. More Info or Return to Top Transportation Bridges: A History of the World's Most Famous and Important Spans Author: Judith Dupre In her follow-up to Skyscrapers, Judith Dupré has taken her initial concept and turned it on its side. Bridges, like its predecessor, is a large-format hardcover book that opens to an impressive span a yard across. The format lends itself well to the material, displaying the many exquisite panoramic shots of bridges in full splendor. The impressive black-and-white photographs convey the majesty, elegance, and beauty of these structures. Bridges is more than a picture book, however. Dupré presents a chronological collection of more than 45 bridges, from early Roman aqueducts to the most recent accomplishments of this century. Each bridge is accompanied by text that, together with the photos, provides the reader with informative background, anecdotes, and cultural and historical context. More Info or Bridges: Three Thousand Years of Defying Nature Author: David J. Brown Brown offers a history of more than 100 of the world's greatest bridges, organized chronologically. He explains their origins and structure principle, beginning with the ancient world (Rome and China) and the medieval period (France, Italy, and the Czech Republic). Chapters deal with bridges of iron and stone, steel, concrete, and those with stay cables. Each chapter has an introduction, and vital statistics are given for each bridge--location, date of construction, and its designer. Brown writes that from prehistoric times to the present, the line of technology is unbroken; what has changed is its level of sophistication and comprehensibility. There are more than 300 color and black-and-white illustrations in this very informative account. More Info or Bridges That Changed the World Author: Bernhard Graf A pictorial list of 50 spans, Graf's album exalts both famous and utterly obscure bridges. By including rope bridges in Nepal, and the newest suspension bridge giants in Japan and Denmark, the author underscores the commonality to any bridge's purpose: vaulting chasms and straits to link people and commerce. Florence's famous Ponte Vecchio, with the shops built onto its spans, expresses the idea literally, while other celebrated bridges do so symbolically, like the now-destroyed Stari Most in Mostar, Bosnia. Whatever a bridge's exact physical purpose, it also exudes a powerful aesthetic presence that Graf handsomely displays: the book's design faces a one-page historical description with a full-page photograph, with an oblong format enhancing the feeling of length. This effect is especially graceful on the An Ji Bridge in China, a beautiful 1,400-year-old structure. More Info or A Picture History of the Brooklyn Bridge Author: Mary J. Shapiro Profusely illustrated account of the greatest engineering achievement of the 19th century. Rare contemporary photos and engravings, accompanied by extensive, detailed captions, recall construction, human drama, politics, much more. 167 black-and-white illustrations. More Info or Subways: The Tracks That Built New York City Author: Lorraine B. Diehl In celebration of the New York City subway system’s 100th birthday, Diehl (The Great Pennsylvania Station; Automat) offers up this easy-to-read, informative history. From its beginnings as an underground amusement ride, to the development of the IRT, BMT and IND rail systems, to its crime-ridden and graffiti-covered fall in the 70’s and, finally, to its current revival, the system has had a more colorful history than most straphangers and tourists realize. Diehl’s well-pitched nostalgia leads readers to appreciate the wonder of the subway’s nascent period and to imagine how incalculably different New York would be today had the transit option that is so taken for granted not been created how and when it was. As Diehl shows, the subway and the cities of New York and Brooklyn grew up together and gave each other character. More Info or Subwayland: Adventures in the World Beneath New York Author: Randy Kennedy Love it, loathe it or simply view it as the most efficient way to get from Brooklyn to the Upper West Side, the New York City subway system is an urban wonder: running 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, Kennedy says it boasts 468 stations, 656 miles of passenger tracks and 6,400 cars, which might carry up to 200 passengers each. It also offers New Yorkers and visitors alike "the gift of proximity"=an "enforced neighborhood" that makes New York "more... cohesive than a city its size ever had a right to be." So argues Kennedy, author of the New York Times column "Tunnel Vision," in the introduction to this collection of three years of his musings on train buffs, poetically inspired token booth operators, singles cars, token suckers, subway performers, track workers and underground fauna. More Info or The Decline of Transit: Urban Transportation in German and US Cities Author: Glenn Yago Automobiles dominate transportation today in most American cities. After World War II, urban planners embraced highway transportation as the solution to urban congestion, while mass transit was shunned as outmoded and appropriate only for older, densely populated cities. Yet the prolonged energy crisis, beginning in 1973, shattered most previously held attitudes about the role of mass transit, and it was now promoted as central to energy efficiency and rational land use. If mass transit is now possible and even desirable in new, auto-oriented cities - Los Angeles, Frankfurt, Tokyo - why did it decline in the first place? In examining the historical conditions that led to the current crisis of urban transportation, the book offers an explanation of past urban and economic policy failures. The Decline of Transit will be essential reading for urban planners, politicians, economists, historians, and all others interested in the state of urban transportation today. More Info or Return to Top Urbanism Waterfront: A Walk Around Manhattan Author: Phillip Lopate Unlike other great cities, as eminent essayist and New York devotee Lopate (Getting Personal) observes, "Manhattan is almost pathologically averse to letting you wander to the river's edge and get close enough to touch the water." In this loose circumnavigation, first up the West Side from the Battery to Washington Heights and then up the East Side from South Street Seaport to Highbridge Park, he takes the reader up close on an information-packed journey—dipping, as the particular location suggests, into memoir, history, current events, marine biology, city planning, literature, architecture, interviews, biography, films, ecology and more. Anyone who relishes the company of Whitman, Melville, both Cranes, even Sara Teasdale, among many other celebrants of the New York waterfront, will particularly enjoy the vicarious sojourn. More Info or Return to Top

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