AN's Editor-in-Chief Recommends Summer Reads for Travel

The Architect's Newspaper's editor-in-chief has curated a list of summer reading recommendations, focusing on lightweight books suitable for travel. The selection spans general-interest nonfiction on the built environment, including topics like landlords turned arsonists in The Bronx, lithium mining, and El Paso's borderlands, alongside works advancing architectural history, theory, and criticism. Notable titles include 'Rem Before Koolhaas' by Antonio Cantero, examining Rem Koolhaas's early journalism at The Haagse Post; 'Totems' by Irénée Scalbert, a collection of essays; 'Beigeification™' by Edgar Rodriguez on global blandness; and the Gumshoe paperback series featuring detective-style texts on Oscar Niemeyer's French Communist Party headquarters and OMA's Villa dall'Ava. Mark Lamster's 'Welcome to Paradox City' offers a critical history of Dallas through architecture. The anthology 'Like Songs About Airports' collects works by the late Leijia Hanrahan, who died in 2022. For fiction, George Saunders's 'Vigil' is recommended for its human tenderness despite its climate crisis premise. The list includes publishers such as W. W. Norton, Nai010 Publishers, Ill Will Editions, La Reunion Publishing, Harvard University Press, Mark Pezinger Books, Random House, Park Books, and Dutton. The article includes affiliate links, noting potential commissions for AN.