An informative introduction to supertalls and the global cities where they rise above the skyline.
An architect and urban designer reflects on the technological innovations that have enabled the construction of “supertalls” and on the advances in urbanism that help mitigate their environmental shortcomings.
Al, the author of The Strip: Las Vegas and the Architecture of the American Dream, is highly knowledgeable about his subject, even if he is conflicted. He claims that “tall buildings are an integral part of urban living for the future” but describes supertalls—skyscrapers that exceed 300 meters in height—as “gas-guzzling Hummers on steroids” and “makers of increased inequity and societal risk.” While shorter skyscrapers “have significant environmental benefits,” buildings like the Petronas Towers in Malaysia, One57 in New York City, the Shanghai Tower, and the Burj Khalifa in Dubai (the world’s tallest building) mostly create environmental costs and “alienate people from nature.” Ostensibly made necessary by urban densities that send land values soaring, supertalls only became feasible with technological advances in structural material (especially, high-performance concrete); building shapes that dampen sway and lessen the vortexes created by high winds; safer and faster elevators that ease vertical movement; and innovations in air conditioning that compensate for inoperable windows and expansive glass facades. Technology, Al proposes, is also the solution to the environmental and urban problems generated by supertalls. Green infrastructure, mass transit, passive solar design, and zoning that allows for mixed-use districts are just a few of his recommendations. Yet, further expressing his ambivalence, the author writes, “technological progress doesn’t always lead to human progress.” Consequently, when he announces that “we are witnessing another golden age…the era of ‘supertalls,’ ” some readers may be unconvinced. Although he addresses a wide array of topics, Al could have written more about the financial feasibility of supertalls, the architectural design challenges they pose, the experiences of users, and the impacts these buildings have on surrounding residential and office markets.
An informative introduction to supertalls and the global cities where they rise above the skyline.Pub Date: April 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-324-00641-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Jan. 17, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2022
A deeply learned dive into the frightening visions of technocrats past and present.
The noted historian and New Yorker staffer looks into a future ruled by machines.
Thirty-odd years ago, writes Lepore, liberal democracies of old were being transformed into both authoritarian or autocratic regimes and by “automatocracy, rule by automation, government by machine-driven computation, prediction, and persuasion.” In this pointed rejoinder to Hannah Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), which foresaw a world in which humans were essentially superfluous, Lepore charts a long history that extends deep into the “machine age,” beginning in the 17th century, which saw “the artificial as existing not only outside the natural but above it, an improvement upon it.” In this conception, humans were fallible, while machines faithfully and unfailingly obeyed the rules set for them. A logical progression followed in the 1920s with the rise of the Technocracy movement, a variety of fascism widely accepted in the U.S. that held that far from being free and equal, humans should be governed by scientists and engineers who alone “have the intelligence and education to understand the industrial operations that lie at the heart of twentieth-century life.” It’s a short hop from there to the present, with tech billionaires pushing AI and, in the case of the influential “self-described ‘neo-monarchist’” Curtis Yarvin, a dictatorship aided by it. In all this, Lepore writes, it is not just the human animal that suffers but all animals and all habitats, which can only worsen with the incessant demands for energy, rare earths, and water that AI requires. And what “humans crave, in that artificial world, is nature,” a nature that is increasingly silenced. This undemocratic world, benefiting only the wealthy at the expense of all else, is a prison of screens and keyboards from which, she writes memorably, “What is required is to imagine an escape, and then to conduct it.”
A deeply learned dive into the frightening visions of technocrats past and present.Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2026
ISBN: 9781324098423
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2026
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
