Van Alen’s Book Club is taking a break starting August 2020. During our hiatus, we’ll think fondly about all the great books we’ve read, and all the engaging, informative discussions we’ve had the past few years. It’s your curiosity, enthusiasm, and participation that makes our Book Club great.
We wish you all the best, and many thanks for your past support of Book Club.
Van Alen Book Club meets the last Tuesday of every month (except December) in our street-level space. Our discussions, moderated by some of our favorite urbanists, use the urban experience in fiction and non-fiction as a springboard to ask how we experience cities, and how we want to make them in the future. Meetings are open to all, and include pizza, wine, and beer.
Location: 303 Bond Street, Brooklyn, NY 11231
Time: 7–9 pm
Questions? Email Andrew Brown, Associate Director of Research
July 28
The Yellow House
Sarah M. Broom
June 30
A Paradise Built in Hell
Rebecca Solnit
May 26
The Nature Fix
Florence Williams
April 28
Capital City
Sam Stein
February 28
The Bridge: How the Roeblings Connected Brooklyn to New York
Peter J. Tomasi
Illustrated by Sara Duvall
January 28
Happy City
Charles Montgomery
October 29
Building and Dwelling
Richard Sennett
September 24
Darwin Comes to Town
Menno Schilthuizen
August 27
July 30
The Municipalists
Seth Fried
May 28
Radical Suburbs: Experimental Living on the Fringes of the American City
Amanda Kolson Hurley
April 30
Open City
Teju Cole
March 26
Fear City: New York’s Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics
Kim Phillips-Fein
February 26
Palaces for the People
Eric Klinenberg
November 27
Behold the Dreamers
Imbolo Mbue
October 30
Makeshift Metropolis
Witold Rybczynski
September 25
Flaneuse
Lauren Elkin
August 28
Blackfish City
Sam J. Miller
July 31
The New Urban Crisis
Richard Florida
May 29
April 24
10:04
Ben Lerner
March 27
The Third Plate
Dan Barber
February 27
January 30
November 12
October 10
Welcome to Your World: How the Built Environment Shapes Our Lives
Sarah Williams Goldhagen
August 15
Silent Spring
Rachel Carson
July 11
The Drowned World
J.G.Ballard
June 13
In the Café of Lost Youth
Patrick Modiano
May 9
April 18
The City & The City
China Miéville
February 21
How Did We Get Into This Mess?: Politics, Equality, Nature
George Monbiot
January 7
Manhattan Transfer
John Dos Passos
November 6
Robert Moses: The Master Builder of New York City
Pierre Christin and Oliver Balez
October 13
Christodora
Tim Murphy
September 13
Mitchell Duneier
June 13
Zero K
Don DeLillo
May 10
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
Matthew Desmond
April 12
Istanbul: Memories and the City
Orhan Pamuk
March 8
Black Deutschland: A Novel
Darryl Pinckney
February 9
The Image of the City
Kevin Lynch
January 12
November 10
M Train
Patti Smith
October 13
On the Town: One Hundred Years of Spectacle in Times Square
Marshall Berman
June 9
Speedboat
Renata Adler
May 12
24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep
Jonathan Crary