Eric Klinenberg is the Helen Gould Shepard Professor in the Social Sciences and director of the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University. He is the coauthor of the #1 New York Times bestseller Modern Romance, and author of the acclaimed books Going Solo, Heat Wave, and Fighting for Air. He has contributed to The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, Wired, and This American Life.
Shortlisted for the Goddard Riverside Stephan Russo Book Prize for
Social Justice
“Eric Klinenberg offers a new perspective on what people and places
have to do with each other.... In case after case, we learn how
socially-minded design matters.... Anyone interested in cities will
find this book an engaging survey that trains you to view any
shared physical system as, among other things, a kind of social
network.”—The New York Times Book Review
“One of my favorite books of 2018… Klinenberg is echoing what
librarians and library patrons have been saying for years: that
libraries are equalizers and absolutely universal.” —Carla Hayden,
Librarian of Congress
“An illuminating examination.... Klinenberg’s observations are
effortlessly discursive and always cogent, whether covering the
ways playgrounds instill youth with civic values or a Chicago
architect’s plans to transform a police station into a community
center. He persuasively illustrates the vital role these spaces
play in repairing civic life.”—Publishers Weekly (starred)
“If America appears fractured at the national level, the author
suggests, it can be mended at the local one. This is an engrossing,
timely, hopeful read, nothing less than a new lens through which to
view the world and its current conflicts.”—Booklist (starred)
“Eric Klinenberg combines a Jane Jacobs-eye on city life with
knowledge of the latest research and practical ideas to address the
crucial issues of the day—class division, crime, and climate
change. This is a brilliant and important book.”—Arlie Hochschild,
author of Strangers in Their Own Land
“Reading Palaces for the People is an amazing experience.
As an architect, I know very well the importance of building civic
places: concert halls, libraries, museums, universities, public
parks, all places open and accessible, where people can get
together and share experiences. To create good places for
people is essential, and this is what I share with Klinenberg: We
both believe that beauty, this kind of beauty, can save the
world.”—Renzo Piano
“This fantastic book reminds us that democracy is fortified and
enlivened by people coexisting together in public, and that good
design and support of a wide variety of public spaces can produce
those mysterious things we call community, membership, a sense of
belonging, a place, maybe a polity. In an age where the push for
disembodiment and never leaving the house and fearing and avoiding
strangers and doing everything as fast as possible is so powerful,
this book makes the case for why we want to head in the opposite
direction. It’s both idealistic and, in its myriad examples,
pragmatic, and delightfully readable.”—Rebecca Solnit, author
of Men Explain Things to Me and A Field Guide to
Getting Lost
“At a time when polarization is weakening our democracy, Eric
Klinenberg takes us on a tour of the physical spaces that bind us
together and form the basis of civic life. We care about each other
because we bump up against one another in a community garden or on
the playground or at the library. These are not virtual
experiences; they’re real ones, and they’re essential to our
future. This wonderful book shows us how democracies
thrive.”—Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, authors of How
Democracies Die
“A great example of research made accessible to non-experts…
Klinenberg draws on loads of published scholarship as well as his
own, weaving it together into a powerful argument…. What Klinenberg
advocates is not luxury along the lines of grand train stations of
the past but decency and thoughtfulness in designing the spaces we
live in.”—Inside Higher Ed
“Eric Klinenberg believes that social life can be designed well,
just as good buildings are. His book is full of hope, which is
all the more striking because Klinenberg is a realist. He is a
major social thinker, and this is a beautifully written, major
book.”—Richard Sennett, Professor of Sociology, London School of
Economics
“In very unequal societies, where the social fabric has been torn
apart and the social distances between people create lack of trust,
community participation and high levels of stress and distress, it
is vitally important to build social infrastucture to bring people
together. Healing these rifts is the key to empowering people to
tackle the inequality that divides them. Eric Klinenberg shows us
how this can be done - this is an important book for our difficult
age.“
—Kate Pickett, co-author of The Spirit Level and The Inner
Level
“Fine reading for community activists seeking to expand the social
infrastructure of their own home places.” —Kirkus Reviews
“The author’s paean to public libraries will strongly appeal to
those who support them as well as interested sociologists and
urbanists.”—Library Journal
![]() |
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
![]() |