The City Out My Window: 63 Views on New York [Hardcover]

Matteo Pericoli (Author), Paul Goldberger (Introduction)

Book Description

Release date: November 3, 2009

From Matteo Pericoli, the celebrated author of Manhattan Unfurled, comes a unique collection of illustrated cityscapes. In these intimate drawings of window views, Pericoli captures the essence of the city by showing us what New Yorkers see when they look out their windows. The City Out My Window shows us a series of private New Yorks, as seen by Tom Wolfe, Tony Kushner, Nora Ephron, Stephen Colbert, Richard Meier, Oliver Sacks, Mario Batali, David Byrne, and other artists, writers, and thinkers who help make the city what it is. The book includes their comments on what they see out their window and is introduced by Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic Paul Goldberger.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Delightful paean...elegant." -- New York Times

"[An] amazing book." -- The New York Daily News

"New Yorkers will never look out their windows the same way again." -- Women's Wear Daily

"There is a lot of beauty -- and more than a little wisdom -- in The City Out My Window." -- Connecticut Post

"Pericoli reveals not just the landscape of the city, but the landscape of the city's greatest minds. Art is the bones of New York City and in the blood of its inhabitants. Pericoli creates a tapestry out of the inevitable and elegant interplay of people and place." -- Popmatters.com

"The City Out My Window offers an intimate sense of the quiet these residents, artists, writers, and composers enjoy and their constant connection with their city through their view. Reading this book, you gain a new sense of what people seek when they find their ideal home, even in crowded New York City...The variety among the 63 charming drawings shows Pericoli's ability to capture the spirit of the city with simple lines." -- Blogcritics.org

About the Author

Matteo Pericoli, a graduate of the Polytechnic School of Architecture, moved to New York in 1995, where he has worked as an architect, illustrator, author, journalist, and teacher. His drawings  have been published in various newspapers and magazines, in the U.S., in Italy, and elsewhere—including The New York Times, The New Yorker, Conde' Nast Traveler, Travel & Leisure, Il Corriere della Sera, and La Stampa, among others. In 2007 he completed Skyline of the World, a 397-foot-long panoramic mural for American Airlines' new International Terminal at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York City.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 144 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; First Edition edition (November 3, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416569901
• ISBN-13: 978-1416569909
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #474,238 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Matteo Pericoli is an architect, author and illustrator.
His books have been published by Random House, Knopf, Chronicle and, in 2009, by Simon & Schuster. His work also appeared in The New Yorker magazine, The New York Times, Farrar Straus & Giroux and Rizzoli among others.
From 1996 through 2000, he worked as project architect of the Jubilee Church in Tor Tre Teste (Rome, Italy) in Richard Meier's studio.

In Progress:
- Windows on the World (previously on NYTimes Op-Ed Page, The Observer, currently on the Paris Review Daily - Fall 2014: Penguin Press)

Completed work:
- London for Children (Macmillan Children's Books, July 2012)
- London Unfurled (Picador, London, October 2011)
- The City Out My Window: 63 Views on New York (Simon & Schuster, November 3, 2009)
- Manhattan Unfurled (Random House, 2001)
- Manhattan Within (Random House, 2003)
- See the City: the Journey of Manhattan Unfurled (Knopf for Young Readers, 2004)
- To the 5 Boroughs, Beastie Boys (Capitol Records, 2004)
- New York e altri disegni (Quodlibet, 2005)
- The True Story of Stellina ( Knopf for Young Readers, 2006)
- Skyline of the World, American Airlines terminal (JFK, 2007)
- World Unfurled (Chronicle Books, 2008)
- Tommaso and the Missing Line (Knopf for Young Readers, 2008)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Another World December 16, 2009

By Susan

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I love this book. As a small town gal who looks out my window to see grass, trees and gardens that are just a step out my door; I have often wondered what a city dweller must see and if they longed for other (greener) views. But, as humans, where we are, what we know, and what we have grown accustomed to, is what we tend to love. This glimpse into a world so different from mine is wonderful. It left me wanting more.
Thank you for opening your homes and sharing your views with Matteo and those of us who purchase this book.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Nice, but... January 8, 2011

By Silenos

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

You would be hard-pressed to fault Matteo Pericoli's drawings: they have all the poetic delicacy of a Japanese estampe and the lightly etched precision of the great French comic book artist Moebius, which is what attracted me to this book in the first place. Nor can you quibble the concept modeled after such brilliant illustrated landscapes as Hiroshige's One Hundred Famous Views of Edo or Hokusai Thirty Six Views of Mount Fuji. Here it is applied to New York, specifically to the views it offers out of its many windows. It will appeal as much to those fresh to the Big Apple as to those who have lived there or are curious of doing so. The book is also well packaged, its cream colored pages sandwiched between thick slabs of grey board pierced at the front by a mock window pane.
You can however regret, specially if you regard the cult of celebrity as essentially baleful, that Mr. Pericoli chose to have his "subjects" be "famous" for some thing or other. Baryshnikov, Batali, Doctorow, Glass, Koch, Leibovitz, etc, etc, etc: the list reads like an orgy of name dropping. Of course, a few of the participants have interesting, even illuminating comments; I was touched by Ethan Herschenfeld's wistfulness for instance, and loved, as I always do, David Byrne's pungent irony. But so many others are perfunctory, not to say cringe worthy, like Baryshnikov's comment that the undeniably remarkable building he gazes on looks "better at night... like a woman". Er, sure, Mikhail, much like the wine I tasted yesterday evening in fact... just like a woman. Those who like to indulge in copious schadenfreude may also take pleasure in the realization that, at least in New York, some of the rich and famous share vistas as boring as those the average city dweller often wakes up to. Ultimately, this is a lovely book to give as a gift: I'll pass it to my younger brother in whose eyes the lights of the city still sparkle. Of course, he never lived here and only came to visit.

5.0 out of 5 stars New York City in genial drawings May 15, 2013

By Guarina

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Bought this for a friend who loves New York City extraordinarily.
Ended up reading into it myself, then looking at every page-- every week. Pericoli is a talented illustrator and cartoonist, well-know in Europe, deserving more fame in the US.Sometimes illustrators do more than photography. This is a good book for those who love cartoonists, original graphic artists and of course, New York City!