Chosen Books

Invited designers and commentators have chosen these as the books that inspire them and that have shaped their worldview or their ideas about design.

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2000 books

Scruples Judith Krantz On Jonathan Adler’s Book List Add to My Reading List	The Sculptures of Picasso Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler On George Lois’s Book List Add to My Reading List	The Sea Wall Marguerite Duras On Craig Dykers’s Current Reading list Add to My Reading List	The Seagull Anton Chekhov On Massimo Vignelli’s Book List Add to My Reading List	The Search for Alexander Robin Lane Fox On George Lois’s Book List Add to My Reading List	The Season William Goldman On David Rockwell’s Book List Add to My Reading List	The Second World War (vols. 1–6) Winston Churchill On Margaret McCurry’s Book List On Alexa Hampton’s Book List Add to My Reading List	The Secrets of Vacheron Constantin Franco Cologni et al. On Richard Sachs’s Book List Add to My Reading List
Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees Lawrence Weschler On Maya Lin’s Book List On Glenn Pushelberg’s Book List Add to My Reading List	Seize the Time Bobby Seale On David Weeks’s Book List Add to My Reading List	Selected Short Stories Rabindranath Tagore On Shashi Caan’s Book List Add to My Reading List	The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet Reif Larsen On Warren Lehrer’s Book List Add to My Reading List	Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein On Warren Lehrer’s Book List Add to My Reading List	The Sense of Order E. H. (Ernst) Gombrich On Calvin Tsao’s Book List On Ed Ng’s Book List Add to My Reading List	A Sense of Place, A Sense of Time John Brinckerhoff Jackson On Paul Goldberger’s Book List On David Adjaye’s Book List Add to My Reading List	Sense of the City Mirko Zardini, ed. On Phyllis Lambert’s Book List Add to My Reading List
The Sense of Unity Nader Ardalan et al. On Philip Freelon’s Book List Add to My Reading List	A Sense of Where You Are John McPhee On George Lois’s Book List Add to My Reading List	Sens-Plastique Malcolm de Chazal On Daniel Libeskind’s Book List Add to My Reading List	Sentinel Syd Mead On Chris Bangle’s Book List Add to My Reading List	Setting the Table Danny Meyer On Jeffrey Beers’s Book List Add to My Reading List	740 Park: The Story of the World’s Richest Apartment Building Michael Gross On Ernest de la Torre’s Book List Add to My Reading List	Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Fashion in Detail Avril Hart et al. On Claire Wilcox’s Book List Add to My Reading List	Seventeenth-Century Women’s Dress Patterns Susan North et al. On Claire Wilcox’s Book List Add to My Reading List
Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design Michael Bierut On Paul Goldberger’s Book List On Deborah Berke’s Book List On list of Books by Michael Bierut Add to My Reading List	Shack Chic Craig Fraser On Denise Scott Brown’s Book List On Robert Venturi’s Book List Add to My Reading List	Shadow of the Silk Road Colin Thubron On Alan Balfour’s Book List Add to My Reading List	The Shadow of the Sun Ryszard Kapuscinski On Alexander Cooper’s Book List Add to My Reading List	The Shape of a Pocket John Berger On Milton Glaser’s Book List Add to My Reading List	The Shape of Content Ben Shahn On Steven Heller’s Book List On Seymour Chwast’s Book List Add to My Reading List	The Shape of Things Vilém Flusser On James Biber’s Book List Add to My Reading List	The Shape of Time George Kubler On Zoë Ryan’s Book List Add to My Reading List
Shapes for Sounds Timothy Donaldson On Erik Spiekermann’s Book List Add to My Reading List	Shaping Things Bruce Sterling On Tucker Viemeister’s Book List Add to My Reading List	Sheherezade Janet Zweig et al. On Warren Lehrer’s Book List Add to My Reading List	Shelley Shelley Winters On Carin Goldberg’s Book List Add to My Reading List	The Shingle Style and the Stick Style Vincent Scully On Denise Scott Brown’s Book List On Robert Venturi’s Book List Add to My Reading List	The Shingle Style Today Vincent Scully On Jaquelin Robertson’s Book List Add to My Reading List	The Shining Stephen King On Ed Ng’s Book List Add to My Reading List	The Shock Doctrine Naomi Klein On Galia Solomonoff’s Book List Add to My Reading List

Announcements

Now is Better by Stefan Sagmeister

Now is Better

By Stefan Sagmeister
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Published: October 2023

Combining art, design, history, and quantitative analysis, transforms data sets into stunning artworks that underscore his positive view of human progress, inspiring us to think about the future with much-needed hope.

Order the book.

Design Emergency: Building a Better Future by Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli

Design Emergency: Building a Better Future

By Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Published: May 2022

Rawsthorn and Antonelli tell the stories of the remarkable designers, architects, engineers, artists, scientists, and activists who are at the forefront of positive change worldwide. Focusing on four themes—Technology, Society, Communication, and Ecology—the authors present a unique portrait of how our great creative minds are developing new design solutions to the major challenges of our time, while helping us to benefit from advances in science and technology.

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Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World’s Most Creative People by Debbie Millman

Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World's Most Creative People

By Debbie Millman
Publisher: Harper Design
Published: February 22, 2022

Debbie Millman—author, educator, brand consultant, and host of the widely successful and award-winning podcast “Design Matters”—showcases dozens of her most exciting interviews, bringing together insights and reflections from today’s leading creative minds from across diverse fields.

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Milton Glaser: POP by Steven Heller, Mirko Ilić, and Beth Kleber

Milton Glaser: POP

By Steven Heller, Mirko Ilić, and Beth Kleber
Publisher: The Monacelli Press
Published: March 2023

This collection of work from graphci design legend Milton Glaser’s Pop period features hundreds of examples of the designer’s work that have not been seen since their original publication, demonstrating the graphic revolution that transformed design and popular culture.

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Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall by Alexandra Lange

Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall

By Alexandra Lange
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: June 2022

Chronicles postwar architects’ and merchants’ invention of the shopping mall, revealing how the design of these marketplaces played an integral role in their cultural ascent. Publishers Weekly writes, “Contending that malls answer ‘the basic human need’ of bringing people together, influential design critic Lange advocates for retrofitting abandoned shopping centers into college campuses, senior housing, and ‘ethnocentric marketplaces’ catering to immigrant communities. Lucid and well researched, this is an insightful study of an overlooked and undervalued architectural form.”

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Die Fläche: Design and Lettering of the Vienna Secession, 1902–1911 (Facsimile Edition) by Diane V. Silverthorne, Dan Reynolds, and Megan Brandow-Faller

Die Fläche: Design and Lettering of the Vienna Secession, 1902–1911 (Facsimile Edition)

By Diane V. Silverthorne, Dan Reynolds, and Megan Brandow-Faller
Publisher: Letterform Archives Books
Published: October 2023

This facsimile edition of Die Fläche, recreates every page of the formative design periodical in full color and at original size, accompanied by essays that contextualize the work, highlighting contributions by pathbreaking women, innovative lettering artists, and key practitioners of the new “surface art,” including Rudolf von Larisch, Alfred Roller, and Wiener Werkstätte founders Koloman Moser and Josef Hoffmann.

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