City Parks: Public Places, Private Thoughts

Catie Marron’s City Parks captures the spirit and beauty of eighteen of the world’s most-loved city parks. Zadie Smith, Ian Frazier, Candice Bergen, Colm Tóibín, Nicole Krauss, Jan Morris, and a dozen other remarkable contributors reflect on a particular park that holds special meaning for them.

Andrew Sean Greer eloquently paints a portrait of first love in the Presidio; André Aciman muses on time’s fleeting nature and the changing face of New York viewed from the High Line; Pico Iyer explores hidden places and privacy in Kyoto; Jonathan Alter takes readers from the 1968 race riots to Obama’s 2008 victory speech in Chicago’s Grant Park; Simon Winchester invites us along on his adventures in the Maidan; and Bill Clinton writes of his affection for Dumbarton Oaks.

Oberto Gili’s color and black-and-white photographs unify the writers’ unique and personal voices. Taken around the world over the course of a year, in every season, his pictures capture the inherent mood of each place. Fusing images and text, City Parks is an extraordinary and unique project: through personal reflection and intimate detail it taps into collective memory and our sense of time’s passage.

City Parks illuminates the spirit and beauty of the world's most loved city parks: an extraordinary visual and poetic journey from London to Brooklyn, Calcutta to Chicago, and Paris to San Francisco, captured in breathtaking photographs and the evocative words of celebrated writers and personalities.

“In the new book City Parks, Catie Marron collects intimate essays on 21 great parks in cities around the world, all accompanied by generous, gorgeous portraits of those parks by the photographer Oberto Gili.” - Alantic.com

“This lavish volume, created by co-chair of Friends of the High Line, features pictures of city parks around the world taken by the fashion photographer Oberto Gili, accompanied by the thoughts of ‘celebrated writers and personalities’ (including Bill Clinton). It is, in other words, not just another coffee-table book, but an artifact of the current neo-Olmsted moment, when glamorous greenness is transforming urban grime and neglect.” - The Atlantic

“This lavish volume features pictures of city parks around the world taken by the fashion photographer Oberto Gili, accompanied by the thoughts of ‘celebrated writers and personalities’ . . . an artifact of the current neo-Olmsted moment, when glamorous greenness is transforming urban grime and neglect.” - The Atlantic

“An eloquent reminder of the way shared landscapes can provide intimate inspiration.” - New York Times Book Review