NOTE: This is Book Week at MORE TO COME. As we come to the end of the year, I will have one post each day to close out my reviews and to showcase the 60 books I read during 2024. Today’s entry looks at my conversations with authors.

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Over the course of 2024 I’ve been privileged to have five different writers accept my invitation to discuss their recently published works, continuing a practice I began last year. The readers of MORE TO COME have been the beneficiary of their generosity. For this year-end roundup, I have pulled these conversations together in a salute to these thoughtful and perceptive authors.

As is appropriate for MTC, the subject matter is all over the map. Scan these short blurbs (the links take you to the full post and conversation) to find history, preservation, architecture, the power of stories, spirituality, and community planning. You’ll find these conversations below, listed alphabetically by author.

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Key to the City: How Zoning Shapes Our World (2024) by Sara C. Bronin is an illuminating survey of the omnipresent tool driving the development of most American communities. Writing in an accessible and approachable style, Bronin shows the real-life consequences of codes that maintain racial segregation, build inequality, prioritize cars over people, and force us into choices that harm our health, our civic life, and the world in which we live. Changing our existing zoning policy is not easy and change is not a panacea. Yet in this ultimately optimistic work, Bronin makes a compelling case for what reformed and reimagined zoning codes can achieve. Sara chats with me about the future of zoning in America.

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Why Louisiana Ain’t Mississippi . . . or Any Place Else! (2022) by Jay Dardenne with photography by Carol M. Highsmith is a companion book to a Louisiana Public Broadcasting documentary and a beautifully illustrated guide to a fascinating piece of America. Dardenne is a long-time politico who provides a short but insightful introduction. The bulk of the book is composed of Highsmith’s wonderful photographs, capturing the flavor of this place which calls us back again and again. Carol answered my questions and shared some of her favorite photographs in this author interview.

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Witness at the Cross: A Beginner’s Guide to Holy Friday (2021) by Amy-Jill Levine examines the stories, texts, social contexts, religious background, and perspective of those who watched Jesus die. Dr. Levine, known as AJ to friends, brings her deep understanding of scripture, insightful commentary, broadness of perspective, and engaging wit to help us consider this climatic moment in the Christian story. AJ also graciously agreed to answer my questions about this work.

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Earth & Soul: Reconnecting Amid Climate Chaos (2024) by Leah Rampy comes from an “intersection of spirituality, ecology and story.” In helping us understand why our souls ache for a deeper connection with the earth, Rampy invites us to think, contemplate, live, and act differently. She travels to edges—where sea, land, and sky meet—because “the division between heaven and earth, past and present, living and dead can blur, and a sense of oneness permeates time and place.” These thin places are where we can choose our stories for the future, stories that will last long beyond our lifetimes. Leah answers my questions about her work in another of the MTC author interviews.

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The Edith Farnsworth House: Architecture, Preservation, Culture (2024) by Michelangelo Sabatino is a richly illustrated, deeply researched, and well-crafted source of unending pleasure for the eyes, mind, and soul. Sabatino and his fellow authors Ron Henderson, Hilary Lewis, Scott Mehaffey, and Dietrich Neumann, have produced a work that broadens our perspective while helping undermine the conventional view of the house as merely a formal object sitting on its site as conceived wholly out of the mind of Mies van der Rohe. In this author interview, Michelangelo talks about key aspects of this important new book.

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Thanks to each of these perceptive and thoughtful authors for taking the time to grace the MTC newsletter with their experiences and insights. It was truly a delight to highlight their creativity and these important works. Click here to find links to all previous author Q&As beginning in 2023.

More to come . . .

DJB

Photos of the writers from my 2023 and 2024 conversations supplied by the authors.