A Sense of Place
As a Philadelphia-based publisher, Paul Dry Books is delighted to bring out Philadelphia Architecture by John Gallery. Together with Sacred Sites and The Planning of Center City, it completes a handsome trio of Gallery's books about Philadelphia and its built environment. His descriptions and the photographs he has selected to illustrate them will give readers a vivid sense of our city.
But what about writers who have only words to make a place imaginable—how do they manage? We know great books create great places: Satan in Hell, Odysseus on his journey home, Huck and Jim rafting down the Mississippi. Though we can never go to these places, we have imagined them.
In the upcoming months, we'll be publishing three other new titles that will take you to places rich with significance.
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In 1610, Johannes Kepler stood on the Charles Bridge in Prague as he pondered what to give his patron for Christmas. A snowflake landed on his coat, inspiring him to muse why snowflakes are six-cornered. A great question from a great questioner! On that bridge, the incomparable Kepler began his thinking for this seminal essay of scientific imagination.
Murray Browne descends to a basement used bookstore where the stern owner seems intent on driving away his sole customer. Undaunted, Browne is prompted to reflect—about fiction's place in his life, and the bookstores, used and new, where he has found and bought the books he cares about.
From the whirl of the fast life in Barcelona to the almost unimaginable desolation of the slums of Bombay, Jaume Sanllorente helps us see the place he left, and the place he now calls home in his quest to save a foundering Indian orphanage.
Paul Dry Books can help you "visit" these places, too:
- The wild green hills of rural Ireland just after Independence, under the auspices of Lord Dunsany.
- Sakhalin Island with Anton Chekhov, by way of James McConkey.
- Colonial Africa and 1920s London, courtesy of John Collier.
- Baffin Island with John Franklin (we assure your safe return), guided by Sten Nadolny.
- Polyglot and peaceful Salonica at the turn of the 20th century, with Leon Sciaky.
- The Taft Hotel and the bustle of New York's Depression-era Times Square, hosted by Stephen Lewis.
- Or for the price of one book, visit sixteen great American Places, with William Zinsser.
Learn More About Paul Dry Books
- "Around the Corner" by Paul Dry
- "Discovered or Invented -- Who Can Say?" by Paul Dry
- "Take Five Moments" by Paul Dry
- "People Reading" by Paul Dry
- "Ten Engagements" by Paul Dry
- A Leap Into Books (Harvard Magazine, 2001)
- Curious Dry Books (The Chronicle of Higher Education, 2002)
- An Experience in 'Reading Better' (Holt Uncensored, 2000)
- "A Welcome Addition" by Robert Leiter
Photo by Wyatt Gallery