Viking, $25.95

For more than two decades, the Talking Heads co-founder and visual artist has biked in cities around the globe. This smart and thoughtful book is his take on the history, art, architecture, geography, politics, bike-friendliness and renewal efforts of places he has visited, including London, Buenos Aires and Istanbul. In Pittsburgh, he praises neighborhood gems such as Millvale's French bakery and Maxo Vanka's murals in St. Nicholas Church but laments the "disastrous urban renewal schemes of the 1960s and '70s [that] have yet to be undone," specifically the I-279 expressway that bisects the North Side.

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