Always something new to learn…
Here is my ongoing list of book recommendations to learn more about various topics. I am not a paid sponsor, so these titles are just books and media that I have genuinely enjoyed or are helping me along my journey as I become a professional in the field. Please enjoy and send in any recommendations!
Down below for each book is the book cover, author, my rating, and the official description pulled from the ISBN. Below that is my list of Goodread’s Book Recommendations. Come join me on there and share some of your favorites!
ALCATRAZ: The name alone said it all. It was meant to send a shudder down the spines of the nation’s most incorrigible criminals. It stripped Al Capone of his power. It tamed “Machine Gun” Kelly into a model of decorum. It took the birds away from the Birdman of Alcatraz.This mammoth reference navigates the island’s history through rarely seen documents, interviews and hundreds of pages of historic photographs. Author interviews range from men such as legendary FBI fugitive James Whitey Bulger; Dale Stamphill, a principle in the 1938 escape with Doc Barker and Henry Young; to Atom Spy Morton Sobell, the co-defendant of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.Michael Esslinger thoroughly details the prominent events, inmates, and life inside the most infamous prison in American History. His research included hundreds of hours examining actual Alcatraz inmate case files (including rare original documents from Al Capone, Machine Gun Kelly, and over a hundred others) exploring the prison grounds from the rooftop to the waterfront to help retrace events, escape routes, in addition to conducting various interviews with former inmates and guards. His study has resulted in detailed accounts of all the recorded escape attempts including the Battle of Alcatraz. A detailed account of the 1962 escape of Frank Morris and the Anglin Brothers provides rare insight extracted through photos, and over 1,700 pages of FBI and Bureau of Prisons investigative notes. Detailed narratives of Alcatraz’s most notable inmates who include Robert Stroud (Birdman of Alcatraz), Al Capone, Machine Gun Kelly, Frank Morris, the Anglin Brothers, Doc Barker, Joe Cretzer, Bernard Coy, Miran Thompson, Sam Shockley, and many-many others. Alcatraz: A History of the Penitentiary Years, is a comprehensive reference on the history of Alcatraz and contains one of the most comprehensive archives of inmate and prison life photographs (over 1,000).
This is a new paperback version of a text, originally published in 1969, that outlined the principles of urban design from an environmental perspective. It should benefit architects, urban and regional planners, and environmentalists
“In presenting us with a vision of organic exuberance and humandelight, which ecology and ecological design promise to open up forus, McHarg revives the hope for a better world.” –LewisMumford
“. . . important to America and all the rest of the world in ourstruggle to design rational, wholesome, and productive landscapes.”–Laurie Olin, Hanna Olin, Ltd.
“This century’s most influential landscape architecture book.”–Landscape Architecture
“. . . an enduring contribution to the technical literature oflandscape planning and to that unfortunately small collection ofwritings which speak with emotional eloquence of the importance ofecological principles in regional planning.” –Landscape and UrbanPlanning
In the twenty-five years since it first took the academic world bystorm, Design With Nature has done much to redefine the fields oflandscape architecture, urban and regional planning, and ecologicaldesign. It has also left a permanent mark on the ongoing discussionof mankind’s place in nature and nature’s place in mankind withinthe physical sciences and humanities. Described by one enthusiasticreviewer as a “user’s manual for our world,” Design With Natureoffers a practical blueprint for a new, healthier relationshipbetween the built environment and nature. In so doing, it providesnothing less than the scientific, technical, and philosophicalfoundations for a mature civilization that will, as Lewis Mumfordecstatically put it in his Introduction to the 1969 edition,”replace the polluted, bulldozed, machine-dominated, dehumanized,explosion-threatened world that is even now disintegrating anddisappearing before our eyes.”
