The 99% Invisible City

'The Invisible City is not a book, but a pair of magic glasses that transform the mundane city around you into a vibrant museum of human ingenuity.' - Justin McElroy, podcaster and New York Times bestselling author of The Adventure Zone [A] diverse and enlightening book . . . The 99% Invisible City is altogether fresh and imaginative when it comes to thinking about urban spaces. - The New York Times Book Review The 99% Invisible City brings into view the fascinating but often unnoticed worlds we walk and drive through every day, and to read it is to feel newly alive and aware of your place in the world. This book made me laugh, and it made me cry, and it reminded me to always read the plaque.' - John Green, bestselling author of The Fault in Our Stars and Turtles All The Way Down Conversational, bite-size entries [and] beautiful tricolor illustrations . . . A field guide for anywhere. - Booklist We usually define cities in terms of their bigness, so it's easy to forget that our daily experience of any city is made up of countless tiny, intimate encounters. Just as Jane Jacobs did fifty years ago, Roman Mars and Kurt Kohlstedt provide a new way of seeing urban life, finding secrets and surprises behind every sewer grate, storefront, and street sign. - Michael Bierut, design critic and author of How to Use Graphic Design to Sell Things, Explain Things, Make Things Look Better, Make People Laugh, Make People Cry, and (Every Once in a While) Change the World I can hear Roman's dulcet tones as I read through this book. It's absolutely fascinating to get an in depth look at the city through their eyes, my walks will never be the same again. 100% brilliant. - Roma Agrawal, author of Built: The Hidden Stories Behind Our Structures Here is a field guide, a boon, a bible, for the urban curious. Your city's secret anatomy laid bare -- a hundred things you look at but don't see, see but don't know. Each entry is a compact, surprising story, a thought piece, an invitation to marvel. Together, they are almost transformative. To know why things are as they are adds a satisfying richness to daily existence. This book is terrific, just terrific. - Mary Roach, author of Stiff and Grunt The ideal companion for city buffs, who'll come away seeing the streets in an entirely different light. - Kirkus