Daniel Brook
• Journalist & author of 'A History of Future Cities' on building modern modernities
Daniel Brook is the author of A History of Future Cities and The Trap. A journalist whose writing has appeared in Harper's, Foreign Policy, Slate, and Metropolis, his architecture writing won the 2010 Winterhouse Award for Design Writing and Criticism. To research A History of Future Cities, Brook lived for a month each in St. Petersburg, Shanghai, Mumbai, and Dubai and conducted archival research on a semester-long fellowship at the Library of Congress. Originally from New York and educated at Yale University, Brook lives in New Orleans.
Speech topics
Building the Global City
In this long-view look at the project of building global hub cities, Brook recounts the forgotten pre-Cold War heyday of American real estate developers and architects working in Asia and the lessons it offers as emerging markets reengage with the global economy today.
Why American Products Conquer the World: A Theory of American Demographics and Global Culture
Drawing on the history of the world's first global cities, places like jazz-music-crazed 1920s Shanghai and Hollywood-movie-addicted 1930s Bombay, Brook explains why when it comes to mass marketing if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.
Books
The Accident of Color: A Story of Race in Reconstruction
As they unveil the future, the authors explore how these changes might revamp our conception of global geography, the hours in our days, and where in the world we might be able to go.
A History of Future Cities
One of The Washington Post's "Favorite Books of 2013"
The Trap: Selling Out to Stay Afloat in Winner-Take-All America
In this provocative, witty, and revealing polemic, Daniel Brook argues that the exploding income gap--a product of the conservative ascendance--is systematically dismantling the American dream.