Books like 'How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built'
Readers who enjoyed How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built by Stewart Brand also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
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Trickster by Sam Michaels
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsGeorgina Garrett was born to be ruthless and she's about to earn her reputation. As World War One is announced a baby girl is born into a harsh life on London streets. Little do people realise that she's going to grow up to rule the borough of Battersea... -
![The Trade Off by Samantha Greene Woodruff]()
The Trade Off by Samantha Greene Woodruff
Rated: 4.42 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsA brilliant and ambitious young woman strives to find her place amid the promise and tumult of 1920s Wall Street in a captivating historical novel by the author of The Lobotomist’s Wife.Bea Abramovitz has a gift for math and numbers. With her father, she studies the burgeoning Wall Street market’s stocks and patterns in the financial pages... -
![Aylak Adam by Yusuf Atılgan]()
Aylak Adam by Yusuf Atılgan
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsHer şeye "karşı" duran, "karşı" çıkan, "karşı" olan bir adam... Aylak Adam... Bir adı bile yok. "C." diyor Yusuf Atılgan kısaca.İnsan her şeye bunca "karşı"yken kendine de "karşı" olmadan nasıl sürdürebilir bir "karşı" yaşamı?C., sıradanlığa, tekdüzeliğe, alışılmışın kolaycılığına hiç mi hiç katlanamıyor. Hem farklıyı hem doğru olanı arıyor. Çabasının boşuna olduğunun da farkında üstelik... -
![The Collected Stories of Richard Yates by Richard Yates]()
The Collected Stories of Richard Yates by Richard Yates
Rated: 4.31 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsRichard Yates was acclaimed as one of the most powerful, compassionate and accomplished writers of America's post-war generation... -
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![Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky by Patrick Hamilton]()
Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky by Patrick Hamilton
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsA timeless classic of sleazy London life in the 1930s, a world of streets full of cruelty and kindness, comedy and pathos, where people emerge from cheap lodgings in Pimlico to pour out their passions, hopes and despair in pubs and bars... -
![King Of Camberwell by Mary Jane Staples]()
King Of Camberwell by Mary Jane Staples
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsSammy was the sharp one of the Adams family.Since he was nine-years-old - when he'd charged his mother interest on a loan to make up the rent money - he'd been busy setting up deals and expanding the family business - a china stall in East Street market. But as his mighty empire grew - two shops and a factory in Shoreditch - so did the determination of his assistant, Susie Brown... -
![The Last Days of Night by Graham Moore]()
The Last Days of Night by Graham Moore
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsNew York, 1888. Gas lamps still flicker in the city streets, but the miracle of electric light is in its infancy. The person who controls the means to turn night into day will make history--and a vast fortune. A young untested lawyer named Paul Cravath, fresh out of Columbia Law School, takes a case that seems impossible to win... -
![Take these Broken Wings by Lyn Andrews]()
Take these Broken Wings by Lyn Andrews
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsSince she was six, Hannah Peckham has known how hard the world is. Thrown into the workhouse by the cousin to whom her desperate soldier father entrusted her, she emerges determined to make the most of what life has to offer, however little that might be.But the narrow confines of the workhouse have left Hannah ill-prepared for the hurly-burly of the Liverpool household in which she finds work... -
![The People: No Different Flesh by Zenna Henderson]()
The People: No Different Flesh by Zenna Henderson
Rated: 4.36 of 5 stars · 15 ratingsA novel expanded from a short story (different from book 1 Pilgrimage which was a push of short stories connected by new material) of the alien PEOPLE and earthlings with gifts similar to those of the People -- who might be lost PEOPLE!The "People" stories inclulded in this book:No Different Flesh (1965)Deluge (1963)Angels Unawares (1966)Troubling of the Waters (1966)Return (1961)Shadow on the... -
![Palinuro of Mexico by Fernando del Paso]()
Palinuro of Mexico by Fernando del Paso
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsLike those writers to whom he has been compared--Fuentes, Garcia Marquez, James Joyce, and Rabelais--del Paso draws upon myth, science, and world literature to expand his particular story to universal proportions... -
![Outcast Child: A heart-breaking and gritty family saga from the Sunday Times bestseller by Kitty Neale]()
Outcast Child: A heart-breaking and gritty family saga from the Sunday Times bestseller by Kitty Neale
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsIn this powerful evocation of working-class South London in the 1950s, drama and heartbreak wreak havoc in the life of young Daisy Bacon, guardian of her Cousin Lizzie. When her mother Judith is run over and killed outside their house, Daisy retreats into a world of silence. Blaming herself for the accident, the girl is unable to utter a word... -
![The Collected Plays, Vol. 1 by Neil Simon]()
The Collected Plays, Vol. 1 by Neil Simon
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThis first volume of The Collected Plays of Neil Simon contains the triumphs that put his unique brand of comic genius on the American stage, and made him the most successful playwright of his generation... -
![A Chorus Line: The Complete Book of the Musical by James Kirkwood Jr., Michael Bennett]()
A Chorus Line: The Complete Book of the Musical by James Kirkwood Jr., Michael Bennett
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratings(Applause Books). It is hard to believe that over 25 years have passed since A Chorus Line first electrified a New York audience. The memories of the show's birth in 1975, not to mention those of its 15-year-life and poignant death, remain incandescent and not just because nothing so exciting has happened to the American musical since... -
![The Lost Sister of Fifth Avenue by Ella Carey]()
The Lost Sister of Fifth Avenue by Ella Carey
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsNew York, 1938: Martha pulled the door of her Fifth Avenue apartment closed, her heart thumping, re-reading the telegram she’d been dreading. Her beloved sister Charlotte needed her help. She was alone in Paris, and the threat of Nazi invasion grew ever stronger. The time had come for Martha to make the bravest decision of her life. She needed to bring Charlotte home...Categorized as:
urban historical-fiction ww2 family female-mc friendship literary-fiction historical -
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![The Bridge by Hart Crane, Waldo Frank]()
The Bridge by Hart Crane, Waldo Frank
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsBegun in 1923 and published 1930, The Bridge is Crane's major work. "Very roughly," he wrote a friend, "it concerns a mystical synthesis of 'America' . . . The initial impulses of 'our people' will have to be gathered up toward the climax of the bridge, symbol of our constructive future, our unique identity... -
![Mockingbird Wish Me Luck by Charles Bukowski]()
Mockingbird Wish Me Luck by Charles Bukowski
Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars · 23 ratingsMockingbird Wish Me Luck captures glimpses of Charles Bukowski's view on life through his poignant poetry: the pain, the hate, the love, and the beauty. He writes of lechery and pain while finding still being able to find its beauty... -
![The Coast of Chicago by Stuart Dybek]()
The Coast of Chicago by Stuart Dybek
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe stolid landscape of Chicago suddenly turns dreamlike and otherworldly in Stuart Dybek's classic story collection. A child's collection of bottle caps becomes the tombstones of a graveyard. A lowly rightfielder's inexplicable death turns him into a martyr to baseball. Strains of Chopin floating down the tenement airshaft are transformed into a mysterious anthem of loss...Categorized as:
urban 20th-century anthologies contemporary fiction illinois literary-fiction north-america -
![The Fan Man by William Kotzwinkle]()
The Fan Man by William Kotzwinkle
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThe Fan Man is a comic novel published in 1974 by the American writer William Kotzwinkle. It is told in the first-person by the narrator, Horse Badorties, a down-at-the-heels hippie living a life of drug-fueled befuddlement in New York City c. 1970... -
![Grace of the Empire State by Gemma Tizzard]()
Grace of the Empire State by Gemma Tizzard
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsIn this breathtaking debut novel, a daring dancer must take her twin brother’s place as a riveter high atop the in-progress Empire State Building to save her family from ruin. After the death of their father, it’s up to Grace O’Connell and her twin brother Patrick to support their family as the Great Depression takes its toll on New York City...Categorized as:
urban romance historical-fiction fiction historical audiobook female-mc 20th-century -
![Belfast Confetti by Ciaran Carson]()
Belfast Confetti by Ciaran Carson
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsBelfast Confetti, Ciaran Carson’s third book of poetry, weaves together in a carefully sequenced volume prose pieces, long poems, lyrics, and haiku. His subjects include the permeable boundaries of Belfast neighborhoods, of memory, of public and private fear, and, indeed, of the forms of language and art... -
![Bears Discover Fire by Terry Bisson]()
Bears Discover Fire by Terry Bisson
Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsBears Discover Fire is the first short story collection by the most acclaimed science fiction author of the decade, author of such brilliant novels as Talking Man and Voyage to the Red Planet... -
![Escaping Dreamland by Charlie Lovett]()
Escaping Dreamland by Charlie Lovett
Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsLargely set in New York City in the early years of the 20th century, the novel follows the exploits of three writers working to create children's series (think Nancy Drew & The Hardy Boys).Robert Parrish s childhood obsession with series books like the Hardy Boys and Tom Swift inspired him to become an author... -
![Low Flying Aircraft And Other Stories by J.G. Ballard]()
Low Flying Aircraft And Other Stories by J.G. Ballard
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsContents:The Ultimate CityLow-Flying AircraftThe Dead AstronautMy Dream of Flying to Wake IslandThe Life and Death of GodThe Greatest Television Show on EarthA Place and a Time to DieThe Comsat AngelsThe Beach... -
![Perverzion by Yuri Andrukhovych]()
Perverzion by Yuri Andrukhovych
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsWhat was the fate of Stanislav Perfetsky—poet, provocateur, and hero of Ukrainian underground culture? Evidence points to suicide. But some whisper murder. Some suggest the grand Eastern European tradition of coerced suicide. It may even be related to the religious cult ceremony he happened upon in Munich . . . or that job as a dancer in a strip club for older women. Or, then again, it may not... -
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![The Wedding Party by Liu Xinwu]()
The Wedding Party by Liu Xinwu
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsIn this sprawling, award-winning novel, celebrated Chinese writer Liu Xinwu cordially invites you to an epic, riotous, and moving neighborhood feast.On a December morning in 1982, the courtyard of a Beijing siheyuan—a lively quadrangle of homes—begins to stir. Auntie Xue’s son Jiyue is getting married today, and she is determined to make the day a triumph...Categorized as:
urban fiction historical-fiction literary-fiction historical classics 20th-century 21st-century -
![Laura by Vivian Schurfranz]()
Laura by Vivian Schurfranz
Rated: 3.67 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsThere was a fierce war raging abroad, and another in her heart.While men are fighting overseas in World War I, lovely Laura Mitchell is caught up in the struggle for women's rights in the Washington, D. C. of 1918. Dismayed by her willingness to go to jail for her beliefs, Laura's mother and sister encourage her to pay more attention to her suitors... -
![I Left My Back Door Open: A Novel by April Sinclair]()
I Left My Back Door Open: A Novel by April Sinclair
Rated: 3.67 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsA successful female DJ refuses to let a few romantic catastrophes keep her down in award-winning author April Sinclair’s dazzlingly soulful novel that was hailed as “a Bridget Jones’s Diary for black women” by the New York Times Book Review Daphne “Dee Dee” Dupree has arrived at age 41 with a career she loves, but a romantic life she doesn’t... -
![Breakfast at Tiffany's & Other Voices, Other Rooms: Two Novels by Truman Capote]()
Breakfast at Tiffany's & Other Voices, Other Rooms: Two Novels by Truman Capote
Rated: 3.70 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsTogether in one volume, here are a pair of literary touchstones from Truman Capote’s extraordinary early career: the transcendently popular novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Other Voices, Other Rooms, the debut novel he published as a twenty-three-year-old prodigy. Of all his characters, Capote once said, Holly Golightly was his favorite... -
![Mother London by Michael Moorcock]()
Mother London by Michael Moorcock
Rated: 3.76 of 5 stars · 11 ratingsThree hospital outpatients all find that they hear voices - the voices of London's past. As they explore the city of their present day, they also explore its recent past and its forgotten people. Through the lives of those on the fringe of society, we learn what it is like - and what it has always been like - to live in the great, sprawling, polyphonic, multicoloured capital...Categorized as:
urban 20th-century adult book fiction historical historical-fiction literary-fiction -
![Paris Peasant by Louis Aragon]()
Paris Peasant by Louis Aragon
Rated: 3.79 of 5 stars · 15 ratingsParis Peasant (1926) is one of the central works of Surrealism, yet Exact Change's edition is the first U.S. publication of Simon Watson Taylor's authoritative translation, completed after consultations with the author. Unconventional in form--Aragon consciously avoided recognizable narration or character development--Paris Peasant is, in the author's words, -a mythology of the modern... -
![Whores for Gloria by William T. Vollmann]()
Whores for Gloria by William T. Vollmann
Rated: 3.75 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsA “beautifully written and deeply affecting” novel (USA Today) about a Vietnam veteran—from the National Book Award-winning author of Europe CentralFrom the acclaimed author of Europe Central comes this fever dream of a novel about a Vietnam veteran, Jimmy, who struggles with alcoholism and devotes his government check and his waking hours to the search for a beautiful and majestic sex worker,... -
![Dreamland by Kevin Baker]()
Dreamland by Kevin Baker
Rated: 3.71 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsIn a stunning work of imagination and memory, author Kevin Baker brings to mesmerizing life a vibrant, colorful, thrilling, and dangerous New York City in the earliest years of the twentieth century... -
![Downriver by Iain Sinclair]()
Downriver by Iain Sinclair
Rated: 3.63 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsDownriver is a brilliant London novel by its foremost chronicler, Iain Sinclair.WINNER OF THE ENCORE AWARD AND THE JAMES TAIT BLACK MEMORIAL PRIZEThe Thames runs through Downriver like an open wound, draining the pain and filth of London and its mercurial inhabitants... -
![Paris Trance by Geoff Dyer]()
Paris Trance by Geoff Dyer
Rated: 3.67 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsLuke moves to Paris and, with his new love and the other expatriate couple from whom they become inseparable, wanders the Eleventh Arrondissement where clubs, cafés, banter, and ecstasy now occupy Gertrude Stein's city "which is not real but is really there."In Paris Trance, Geoff Dyer fixes a dream of happiness--and its aftermath--with photographic precision... -
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![Dirty Havana Trilogy by Pedro Juan Gutiérrez, Natasha Wimmer]()
Dirty Havana Trilogy by Pedro Juan Gutiérrez, Natasha Wimmer
Rated: 3.72 of 5 stars · 18 ratings“A lewd, impious and brilliant novel of contemporary Cuba. In the brutality of his honesty, Mr. Gutierrez reminds one of Jean Genet and Charles Bukowski.” —New York TimesDirty Havana Trilogy chronicles the misadventures of Pedro Juan, a former journalist now living hand to mouth in and around Cuba, half disgusted and half fascinated by the depths to which he has sunk... -
![Chains Around the Grass by Naomi Ragen]()
Chains Around the Grass by Naomi Ragen
Rated: 3.50 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsAfter David Markowitz, a first-generation Jewish immigrant, is conned into making a bad investment that leaves his family bankrupt, he dies suddenly, leaving his wife, Ruth, to find a way to survive and keep the family together...Categorized as:
urban new-york-state fiction female-mc historical-fiction 20th-century literary-fiction book -
![Sexual Perversity in Chicago and the Duck Variations by David Mamet]()
Sexual Perversity in Chicago and the Duck Variations by David Mamet
Rated: 3.64 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe Duck Variations is a dialogue between two old men sitting on a park bench. The conversation turns to the mating habits of ducks, but soon begins to reveal their feelings about natural law, friendship, and death. New York magazine has called The Duck Variations “a gorgeously written, wonderfully observant piece whose timing and atmosphere are close to flawless... -
![The Bathroom by Jean-Philippe Toussaint]()
The Bathroom by Jean-Philippe Toussaint
Rated: 3.58 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsFirst published in France in 1985, The Bathroom wasJean-Philippe Toussaint's debut novel, and it heralded a new generationof innovative French literature. In this playful and perplexing book,we meet a young Parisian researcher who lives inside his bathroom... -
![Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear by Katharine Weber]()
Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear by Katharine Weber
Rated: 3.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsA New York Times Notable Book of the YearA Publishers Weekly Best Book of 1995Harriet Rose, twenty-six, is an American photographer just winning recognition for her work. A travel fellowship brings her to visit her best friend and former roommate, Anne Gordon, in Switzerland... -
![Saved by Edward Bond]()
Saved by Edward Bond
Rated: 3.40 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsDescribed by its author as 'almost irresponsibly optimistic', Saved is a play set in London in the sixties. Its subject is the cultural poverty and frustration of a generation of young people on the dole and living on council estates... -
![Prague Tales by Jan Neruda, Michael Henry Heim]()
Prague Tales by Jan Neruda, Michael Henry Heim
Rated: 3.43 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsA collection of Jan Neruda's intimated, wry, bitter-sweet stories of life among the inhabitants of Mala Strana, the Little Quarter of nineteenth century Prague. Prague Tales is a classic story whose influence has been acknowledged by generations of Czech writers... -
![Crossing on the Paris by Dana Gynther]()
Crossing on the Paris by Dana Gynther
Rated: 3.36 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsDownton Abbey meets Titanic in this sweeping historical novel about three women of different generations and classes, whose lives intersect on a majestic ocean liner traveling from Paris to New York in the wake of World War I.The year is 1921. Three women set out on the impressive Paris ocean liner on a journey from Paris to New York... -
![New York City in 1979 by Kathy Acker]()
New York City in 1979 by Kathy Acker
Rated: 3.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratings"It is necessary to go to as many extremes as possible."A tale of art, sex, blood, junkies and whores in New York's underground, from cult literary icon Kathy Acker...Categorized as:
urban fiction classics 20th-century female-author literary-fiction anthologies contemporary
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