• The best books on Mumbai - Ravan and Eddie by Kiran Nagarkar
  • The best books on Mumbai - Em and the Big Hoom by Jerry Pinto
  • The best books on Mumbai - Miss Laila, Armed and Dangerous by Manu Joseph
  • The best books on Mumbai - Rediscovering Dharavi by Kalpana Sharma
  • The best books on Mumbai - Stars from Another Sky by Saadat Hasan Manto

The best books on Mumbai, recommended by Saumya Roy

It’s one of the most densely populated, vibrant cities in the world, combining enormous wealth with dire poverty. It’s India’s financial and commercial capital, home to the glamour of Bollywood and the movie industry, but it has somehow managed to defy modernization. Saumya Roy, journalist, author and co-founder of a nonprofit that made loans to the city’s poorest entrepreneurs, recommends her favourite books on Mumbai (aka Bombay).

  • The best books on Jewish Vienna - Tante Jolesch or the Decline of the West in Anecdotes by Friedrich Torberg & Maria Poglitsch Bauer (translator)
  • The best books on Jewish Vienna - The Road into the Open by Arthur Schnitzler & Roger Byers (translator)
  • The best books on Jewish Vienna - The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth
  • The best books on Jewish Vienna - The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig & Anthea Bell (translator)
  • The best books on Jewish Vienna - Last Waltz in Vienna by George Clare

The best books on Jewish Vienna, recommended by Brigid Grauman

In the late 19th and early 20th century, Vienna had a vibrant intellectual and cultural life, embraced and at times led by key figures in its large Jewish community. All that would disappear with the rise of anti-Semitism and the Anschluss. Many Jews fled or committed suicide. Others were deported to concentration camps. After the war some went back, but Vienna would never be the same. Here Brigid Grauman, whose father’s family were assimilated Jews from Vienna, recommends books that evoke that poignant, tragic period that ended with World War II.

  • The best books on Future Cities - City of Bits: Space, Place and the Infobahn by William J. Mitchell
  • The best books on Future Cities - The Metapolis Dictionary of Advanced Architecture: City, Technology and Society in the Information Age by Federico Soriano, Fernando Porras, José Morales, Manuel Gausa, Vicente Guallart & Willy Müller
  • The best books on Future Cities - Cities In Civilization by Peter Hall
  • The best books on Future Cities - The City of Tomorrow: Sensors, Networks, Hackers and the Future of Urban Life by Carlo Ratti & Matthew Claudel
  • The best books on Future Cities - Local Code: 3,659 Proposals about Data, Design and the Nature of Cities by Nicholas de Monchaux

The best books on Future Cities, recommended by Davina Jackson

We are a city-dwelling species. Our urban existence creates both opportunities and challenges, as the recent pandemic has illustrated. One thing seems clear, however. Understanding the way we interact with our built environment is becoming an increasingly data-driven enterprise, as Davina Jackson argues compellingly in her book, Data Cities. Here, she shares the five books that best explain the technology behind the urban planning of the future.