Welcome to Litsy!

3 months and 1,162 pages later, I‘m finally done with The Power Broker! Totally lives up to its reputation as one of the greatest biographies of all time. Caro‘s meticulous attention to detail and captivating narrative style make this a true epic. Grateful to have learned so much about the political history & urban geography of the city I now call home. 🌟5/5🌟

Next read.

#ThewholethingIthinkitssick
#Breadandcircuses

As a #longtimefed I worked in a total of seven different buildings. I saw on Bluesky this morning that the current regime has offered hundreds of federal buildings for sale, about a third of them in the Washington DC area.

You would think a real estate genius would know that selling multiple properties at once, when the agency managing those properties has had its staff cut, might not bring the highest price? Or maybe that‘s not the goal?

I've had this one on my shelf for a long time after hearing about it on the What Should I Read Next podcast and finally got to it when it came up as November's #Bookspin. Really interesting discussion of what makes a city livable, healthy, and desirable. @TheAromaofBooks

#SummerSouls #park Every time I have gone to New York, I try to visit some part of Central Park. A treasure! When it was first built, the common complaint was it was too far north, the city would develop that far out.😂 New York wouldn‘t be the same without this amazing space.

I will never look at parking the same way again. I think the title is a bit wrong, it should be “Explains North America”.

I really liked this one. I thought it was a really fun time. It's just super chatoic the whole time. I liked the game ascpet and the action just kept coming. This isn't like a hard-hitting crazy thriller. It's just a fun time. 4/5

It was a November afternoon in Queens and Jie Zou was looking for a parking spot.
#FirstLineFridays
@ShyBookOwl

Crossings is an eye-opening and incredibly thorough look at the way the human-created roads are affecting everything from deer populations and monarch butterfly migration in North America, to kangaroo roadkill and orphaned wallabies in New Zealand. Goldfarb lays out ways humans are correcting our mistakes—building land bridges for crossings and planting milkweed for butterflies. Is it enough? Can we do more?
I loved this book!!

I heard about this from Parnassus Books‘ Laydown Diaries last week, and their recs rarely disappoint! Kimble looks at three cities in Texas and how proposed interstate highway expansions have negatively impacted local citizens, businesses, and the climate/air quality. I learned a great deal about why routing them through cities rather than around does not usually help travel times and what on-the-ground activists are doing to oppose this.