Listen free for 30 days

Listen with offer

Preview

£0.00 for first 30 days

Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Magnetic City

By: Justin Davidson
Narrated by: Justin Davidson, Eliza Foss
Try for £0.00

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.

Summary

From New York magazine's architecture critic, a walking guide to New York City - a historical, cultural, architectural, and personal approach to seven neighborhoods throughout Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx, including six essays that help us understand the evolution of the city.

For nearly a decade, Pulitzer Prize - winning critic Justin Davidson has explained the ever-changing city of New York to his readers at New York magazine, introducing new buildings, interviewing architects, tracking the way the transforming urban landscape shapes who New Yorkers are. Now, his extensive, inspiring knowledge will be available to a wide audience. An insider's guide to the architecture and planning of New York that includes original insights from the men and women who built the city and lived in it - its designers, visionaries, artists, writers - Magnetic City offers first-time visitors and lifelong residents a new way to see New York.

Includes a bonus PDF of maps and walking tours throughout Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx

  • The Financial District
  • The World Trade Center
  • The Seaport and the Brooklyn waterfront
  • Chelsea and the High Line
  • 42nd Street
  • The Upper West Side
  • The South Bronx and Sugar Hill

Praise for Magnetic City:

“An intimate, seductive guidebook.” (The New York Times)

“An enthralling new book makes clear that I’m not alone in my home-town infatuation...lends nuance, texture and historical perspective to my impression that New York City has never been so appealing or life-affirming as it is today.” (New York Post)

“[Davidson] combines a keen intelligence, experience, observational skills, expertise (especially but not solely architectural), and an elegant writing style to make this beautifully produced book indispensable.” (Booklist, starred review)

“A street-level celebration of New York City in all ‘its perpetual complexity and contradiction’...a worthy companion to Alfred Kazin’s A Walker in the City and the American Institute of Architects guides to the architecture of New York as well as a treat for fans of the metropolis.” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review)

“Justin Davidson does more than direct our feet to New York’s hidden monuments. He explains the structure of the city with a clarity that would be bracing even for a Gotham habitué, but more than that, he finds the meaning in every building and byway.” (Andrew Solomon, National Book Award-winning author of Far from the Tree)

“Mr. Davidson’s exceptional knowledge of our beloved city is inspiring. Magnetic City is now my official chaperone.” (Patti LuPone)

“Justin Davidson has a mind alive to every signal, and his brilliant prose style transmits that electricity in black-and-white type. He is thus born to the task of capturing the chaotic splendor of New York City on the page.” (Alex Ross, author of Listen to This)

“Justin Davidson’s beautiful tours of New York City invoke and redouble our love of the metropolis.” (Jerry Saltz, senior art critic, New York)

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2017 Justin Davidson (P)2017 Random House Audio
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

Listeners also enjoyed...

Paris, Paris cover art
The Bowery Boys cover art
Here Is New York cover art
City of the Century cover art
Sicilian Splendors cover art
The Geography of Nowhere cover art
Meet Me by the Fountain cover art
Brooklyn cover art
Grand Central cover art
One World Trade Center cover art
Neither Here nor There cover art
The 8.55 to Baghdad cover art
The Alps cover art
Modern Man cover art
Brazil cover art
The Disneyland Story cover art

Critic reviews

"Davidson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic for New York magazine, is a resident, student, and passionate lover of New York, and he has done right by a subject that, fittingly, has been essayed many times before. He combines a keen intelligence, experience, observational skills, expertise (especially but not solely architectural), and an elegant writing style to make this beautifully produced book indispensable." (Booklist)

"Justin Davidson's beautiful tours of New York City invoke and redouble our love of the metropolis. His observations of landmarks, in-between places, and layered histories, delivered by an amazing kindred-spirit of architecture, make us feel like royal presences in the city." (Jerry Saltz, senior art critic, New York)

"A fascinating and insightful companion for a walking tour of New York City. I particularly enjoyed the rich interweaving of the contemporary and the historical. A book worthy of the 21st century flaneur!" (Daniel Libeskind)

What listeners say about Magnetic City

Average customer ratings

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.