The Endless City

Phaidon's latest tome eschews art-and-design for facts-and-figures. The Endless City features essays by prominent architects, urban planners and other metropolitan experts who examine the modern urban condition and back up their conjectures with raw data. Edited by Ricky Burdett, a professor at the London School of Economics, and Deyan Sudjic, director of the Design Museum, London, the book is a print companion to the Urban …

Rainbow In Your Hand

Created by Japanese art director and copywriter Masashi Kawamura, this Rainbow In Your Hand flip book is a mesmerizing little toy. The 36-page book has an image of the color spectrum against a black background on each page, creating the illusion of an arced rainbow hovering above the pages as the pages flip by. Available from the Japanese Utrecht website. via Swissmiss by way of …

Arlene Gottfried: Sometimes Overwhelming

These days, there’s no shortage of people glorifying the rougher New York City of yesteryear. But if anyone needs proof of the grit and grime with a dash of wit, there’s Sometimes Overwhelming, the third book by photographer Arlene Gottfried. The native New Yorker documents her hometown in the 1970s and '80s, an era before rising prices and relative security forced out the more colorful …