Books

 

Brooklyn: The Once and Future City
(New York: Princeton University Press, 2019)

“Thomas Campanella’s BROOKLYN: THE ONCE AND FUTURE CITY is a sheer delight. A cornucopia of mysteries, secrets, meticulous research and fun facts, it will prove essential reading for anyone with an appetite for New York history.” Jennifer Egan, author of Manhattan Beach

“A marvelous book that finally does justice to its majestic subject. Nevermore can it be said, as Thomas Wolfe wrote, ‘only the dead know Brooklyn.’ Thomas Campanella knows Brooklyn, inside and out.” Phillip Lopate, editor of Writing New York

“. . . a terrific piece of work, easily the best book on the history of Brooklyn.” Mike Wallace, co-author of Gotham

 

CD2008-tfzwef

The Concrete Dragon: China’s Urban Revolution and What it Means for the World
(New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2008)

“A fascinating and timely book that sets the scene for any further discussion of China’s explosive urban growth across the last twenty years.” Jonathan Spence, Yale University

“One of the most attention-grabbing and thought-provoking books on China I have read in a long time.” David Frum, senior editor, The Atlantic

“brilliant . . . the best available account of the material foundations on which the culture-ideology of consumerism in China rests.” Leslie Sklair, London School of Economics

 

 

RS2005-2hexd3hThe Resilient City: How Modern Cities Recover from Disaster (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). Co-edited with Lawrence J. Vale.

“A fascinating collection.” Sir Peter Hall, University College London

“a provocative and wide-ranging account of how modern cities have bounced back from disasters . . . scholarly but clear and jargon-free.” Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Newsweek

“brings together histories of fire, earthquake, terrorism and war to demonstrate that the most traumatic urban disasters can become the most dramatic urban recoveries.” Robert Fishman, University of Michigan

“vast geographic reach and long temporal arc” Ari Kelman, Technology and Culture

 

RS2003-1e80h0jRepublic of Shade: New England and the American Elm (New Haven: Yale Univeristy Press, 2003)

  • Winner of the Spiro Kostof Book Award, 2005

“the mighty elm . . . rises again.” Mark Rozzo, The New Yorker

“What Mark Kurlansky did for codfish . . . Campanella does for elms—treats them like a prism, holds them up to history and sees what fresh, unsuspected light comes blazing through.” Amy Godine, Orion

“It is remarkable that no one has previously thought to write a history of this American icon, but we are lucky to have waited.” Witold Rybczynski, Los Angeles Times Book Review

 

CFS2001-2ihprqcCities from the Sky: An Aerial Portrait of America (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2001)

“The photographs . . . capture the optimism and exuberance of the past 100 years and recall our love affair with the silver skyline.” Jessie Scanlon, Wired