Books: The Essential Insider's Guide (City Secrets)

Called "the best literary gift to travelers since the Baedeker and Henry James" (Financial Times), City Secrets guides are charming companions to the world’s most fascinating destinations, from cities to movies, offering discoveries from internationally renowned authors, artists, and historians. Books takes this intimate, insider’s approach to literature, featuring 200 brief essays and recommendations by 150 esteemed figures in the literary world, including authors, writers, journalists, scholars, and critics. The list of contributors includes: Oscar Hijuelos, Pulitzer Prize–winning author; John Guare, playwright; Alec Wilkinson, The New Yorker columnist and author; poet laureates Mark Strand and Robert Pinsky; and Kenneth Turan, NPR and the Los Angeles Times film critic, among many others. Fang Duff Kahn Publishers will donate 2% of the purchase price of each book to First Book, a national organization that gives children from low-income families the opportunity to read and own their first new books. It has distributed more than 65 million books to children.

Robert Kahn is an architect in private practice. His work includes academic, institutional, residential, and commercial projects, and it has been featured in many leading publications in the field. He is also the creator and editor of the City Secrets series. Mark Strand is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including Man and Camel (2006) and Blizzard of One (1998), which won the Pulitzer Prize. He has served as Poet Laureate of the United States and currently teaches English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York.