The Illusion of SeparationBy Giles Hutchins If you’ve ever questioned our current state of mind, why we think the way we do, or how Western philosophy became what it is, The Illusion of Separation is a great introductory text. The book introduces the history of modern philosophy and explores how Read more…
Land Administration and Practice in Hong KongBy Roger Nissim Having lived in Hong Kong for many years, I have friends who are caught up in the high housing prices of Hong Kong. Criticisms are plenty in a city with one of the worlds highest population densities, but solutions are scarce. Read more…
The Student Leadership Challenge By Barry Posner and James Kouzes A little while back I had to read this book for work in order to understand the processes adopted for student leadership development. The introduction itself and the introductory paragraphs were great at explaining what the five proposed practices are Read more…
The Way To GoBy Kate Ascher It was never enough for me to just admire the minimalist designs of transportation network maps, I had to find out what made those systems go. Knowing that Ascher has a reputation for representing complex concepts on easy to understand diagrams, I bought this Read more…
Transit Maps of the World By Mark Ovenden Cataloguing an extensive collection of the world’s metro maps, Transit Maps of the World was the perfect buy for train lovers like me. I love travelling around the world to see local transport networks and how they serve as the vital backbone Read more…
The HeightsBy Kate Ascher If you’ve already read about what goes across the city in Underground by David Macauley, then The Heights will give you an idea of what goes up into a building. Once you are done reading this book, you’ll never take another office building or apartment block Read more…
Underground By David Macauley How do workmen lay utilities cables? Where does your sewage go? What’s underneath the ground floor of the building? These are all questions that you can find answers to in Underground by David Macauley. When I took an introductory course to civil engineering, I was in Read more…
Death and Life of Great American Cities By Jane Jacobs First published in 1961, Jane Jacobs outlines the reasons for the failure of urban core areas in America and attributes it to the unsustainable sprawl of suburban housing, car-dependent culture, and flawed urban design philosophy based on what she calls Read more…
The Vocation Lectures By Max Weber While not a book in its original format, the bounded text is as influential in the field of social sciences as it was when first delivered as lectures in Munich in the late 1910’s. The lectures consists of two parts: “Science as a Vocation” Read more…
Mall City: Hong Kong’s Dreamworlds of Consumption Edited by Stefan Al With more shopping malls per square kilometre than any other place on Earth, there’s no better place to research the use of retail space than Hong Kong. This was the first book I bought from the Hong Kong University Read more…