For architectural guidebooks, there is the
AIA Guide to New York City, 5th Edition by Norval White, Eliot Willensky and Fran Leadon, Oxford University Press, and the
Guide to New York City Landmarks, 3rd Edition by the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission, Wiley. And Bob Stern's New York Series of volumes from 1880 to 2000 are great, but don't plan on taking them in your backpack.
If you're a fan of maps, as I am, look up
Manhattan in Maps by Paul Cohen and Robert T. Augustyn, Rizzoli, and while you're in the City, go to the Map Room at the New York Public Library at 42nd Street, the last of many spaces in the building renovated by Davis Brody Bond.
For a sense of its infrastructure, there's
The Works, Anatomy of A City, by Kate Ascher, The Penguin Press.
Of historical interest,
Manhattan 45, by Jan Morris, the great travel writer, with observations of all things great and small in the City at the end of WWII. Or, for an insight into life in NYC during the Gilded Age, the mystery novel
The Alienist, by Caleb Carr is a great read. And Joseph Mitchell writes of exploring the City on foot in the New Yorker... (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/02/11/130211fa_fact_mitchell)
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Nathan Hoyt FAIA
Principal
Nathan Hoyt FAIA, Architect
Nyack NY
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