Book description
What makes a place? "Infinite City", Rebecca Solnit's brilliant reinvention of the traditional atlas, searches out the answer by examining the many layers of meaning in one place, the San Francisco Bay Area. Aided by artists, writers, cartographers, and twenty-two gorgeous color maps, each of which illuminates the city and…
Why read it?
1 author picked Infinite City as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Rebecca Solnit’s San Francisco is an onion; not one to be peeled back, but one whose paper skins remain overlapping in layered complexity. Reflecting the city’s élan, this odd-sized book is a beautiful compendium of exquisitely illustrated maps, each unique in style and in juxtaposing themes. You’ll open it to find one plotting Bay Area culinary establishments against its Super Fund sites; then flip to a quixotic mapping of murders and Monterey Cypress; then to another revealing the lost world of South of Market or the Third Street corridor from 4000 B.C.E. to 2001. Each map has a corresponding essay,…
From Elizabeth's list on San Francisco’s idealism, power, grit, and beauty.
If you love Infinite City...
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The scenario we are facing is scary: within a few decades, sea levels around the world may well rise by a metre or more as glaciers and ice caps melt due to climate change. Large parts of our coastal cities will be flooded, the basic outline of our world will…
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