The City Out My Window: 63 Views on New York

I gave this as a gift to very good friends who reside in the heart of Manhattan. They tell me they loved it and found the photos very interesting and enjoyable.

This is a beautiful and fascinating book. It is a window into the lives of the owners and their views on their view. This is a real treat and a great little coffee table book. The sketches are superb.

Saw this book on CBS Sunday Morning and received it two days later. Great book, highly recommend. Thank you. AAA+

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.

Matteo Pericoli has created a lovely series of drawings showing what New Yorkers see outside their windows. The covers are hard cardboard, giving the feeling of an apartment window casing. The drawings are well done and often quite surprising. I particularly liked the comments that Pericoli gathered from the residents of the apartments about their personal views of the city. On every left page is text, written by the window's owner and on every right page is a sketch drawn by Pericoli. Caroline Baron writes that her window "provides a structure through which we can dream (and prepare for weather!)". Mikhail Baryshnikov writes the view is better at night, "like a woman". Mario Batali is almost about the ghost of Washington Square (and brings to mind his wonderful Babbo Restaurant just below his apartment. David Byrne is philosophical: "I think of my view as pretty typical for a New Yorker. We look out our windows at other windows. That, in a way, mirrors our lives here -- we are constantly looking at each other, millions of us, on the streets and elsewhere." Paul Goldberger writes in his introduction, "[Pericoli] reveals...the personal connection each of us has to the cityscape, and the way in which things that are simply there, things that we did not create but that we look at all the time, can have a profound effect on our being. ... [Y]our window is the frame through which you see your own picture of the world, a picture that is yours and no one else's." The residents's comments reflect those observations. Pericoli has put together a lovely collection of his drawings on his website so you can see the high quality of his work. Manhattan Unfurled is a wonderful example of what his imagination can conceive. He created two large pen and ink drawings of fifteen hundred buildings, and nineteen bridges in two 37 foot long scrolls of the East and West Sides of the Manhattan skyline. In the book version, there is a 24-panel, 22-foot-long accordion fold-out, with the entire East and West Side drawings, one on each side. World Unfurled is a similar work based on "Skyline of the World", the 397-foot long mural installed in 2007 at the new American Airlines Terminal at John F. Kennedy Airport. The book features an accordion-style fold-out of the entire drawing and a 70-city journey throughout the world. The precision of Pericoli's drawings bring the city to life in an extraordinary way. If you love New York City, or exquisite pen and ink drawings of buildings, any one of these three works will inspire and delight you. Robert C. Ross 2009