9 Highly Recommended Titles to Check Out While Social Distancing

If you’ve found yourself desiring more ways to fill your days while social distancing, or just want to learn more during this time; check out these titles below. These titles were recommended by Boston University’s City Planning and Urban Affairs faculty and alumni.

City of Quartz

Author Mike Davis

“The hidden story of L.A. Mike Davis shows us where the city’s money comes from and who controls it while also exposing the brutal ongoing struggle between L.A.’s haves and have-nots”

~Goodreads

Common: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families

Author: J Anthony Lukas

“One of the best books ever written about Boston. Common Ground won the Pulitzer Prize for its treatment of Boston’s 1970s busing crisis through the lives of African-American, Irish-American, and an upper-middle-class urban pioneer families,”

~Professor James O’Connell

Empire of Cotton: A Global History

Author: Sven Beckert

“Beckert is a Harvard professor who has won the Bancroft History Prize. Empire of Cotton is a model for examining how globalization has unfolded. In this case, how the commodity of cotton drove the Industrial Revolution, while promoting American slavery and precipitating the Civil War.”

~Professor James O’Connell

Los Angeles Plays Itself (documentary)

Director: Thom Andersen

Documentary displaying how Los Angeles is depicted in film and television

Saving America’s Cities: Ed Logue and the Struggle to Renew Urban America in the Suburban Age

Author: Lizabeth Cohen

“Harvard’s Lizabeth Cohen won the Bancroft Prize as 2020’s best book on American History. [The book is] about the career of planner Ed Logue and his experiences in New Haven, Boston, New York State, and the South Bronx in seeking to revive America’s declining cities.”

~Professor James O’Connell

Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles

Author: David Ulin

“In Sidewalking, David L. Ulin offers a compelling inquiry into the evolving landscape of Los Angeles. Part personal narrative, part investigation of the city as both idea and environment, Sidewalking is many things: a discussion of Los Angeles as urban space, a history of the city’s built environment, a meditation on the author’s relationship to the city, and a rumination on the art of urban walking….”

~Goodreads

The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How our Government Segregated America

Author: Richard Rothstein.

“In this groundbreaking history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein, a leading authority on housing policy, explodes the myth that America’s cities came to be racially divided through de facto segregation—that is, through individual prejudices, income differences, or the actions of private institutions like banks and real estate agencies. Rather, The Color of Law incontrovertibly makes clear that it was de jure segregation—the laws and policy decisions passed by local, state, and federal governments—that actually promoted the discriminatory patterns that continue to this day.”

~Professor Eugene Benson