Daniel Brook is the acclaimed author of books on urban history including A History of Future Cities, The Accident of Color, and The Einstein of Sex (forthcoming). His work as a journalist and book and architecture critic has appeared in publications including Harper’s, The New Yorker, Architectural Record, Foreign Policy,... Read more
Daniel Brook is the acclaimed author of books on urban history including A History of Future Cities, The Accident of Color, and The Einstein of Sex (forthcoming). His work as a journalist and book and architecture critic has appeared in publications including Harper’s, The New Yorker, Architectural Record, Foreign Policy, and The New York Times Magazine. In his writing, Brook, who has reported from five continents, uses concrete observations—of a building, a city, an institution, or a person—to ground broader explorations of economic and political questions.
Brook’s work has garnered numerous awards including the Ina and Robert Caro Research/Travel Fellowship, the Winterhouse Award for Design Writing and Criticism, and Yale University’s John Hersey Prize. A History of Future Cities was named one of the ten favorite books of the year by The Washington Post, featured on the cover of the TLS, and longlisted for the Lionel Gelber Prize, awarded to the best foreign affairs book published in the English language each year.
Brook has appeared many times on National Public Radio and C-SPAN BookTV and has presented his research globally at thinktanks, universities, and museums, including the Asia Society, the University of Toronto, and the UCCA Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing. His research has been supported by institutions including the Library of Congress, the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, and the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. His writing has been translated into French, Spanish, Russian, and Chinese.
Born in Brooklyn, raised on Long Island, and educated at Yale, Brook lives in New Orleans.
Gazing out at the skyline as your plane lands in Dubai, it’s easy to imagine that the global city is a twenty-first century creation. But the project of building new cities with new people to leap into modernity has existed as long as there’s been a modern world. By examining...
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Globalization has been a volatile process ever since it began. The rush toward new ways and imported goods inevitably triggers an equal and opposite reaction from a growing sense that one’s heritage is being disrespected and one’s authentic self diluted. Understanding the tensions that have always lurked within globalization can...