H. Klotz
(ed)
New York Architecture 1970-1990
(Prestel/Rizzoli). Extremely well-illustrated account of the shift from modernism to postmodernism and beyond.
Jacob Riis
How the Other Half Lives
(Dover/Hill & Wang). Republished photojournalism reporting on life in the Lower East Side at the end of the nineteenth century. Its original publication awakened many to the plight of New York's poor.
Stern, Gilmartin, Mellins; Stern, Gilmartin, Massengale; Stern, Mellins, Fishman
New York 1900; 1930; 1960
(Rizzoli, US). These three exhaustive tomes, subtitled "Metropolitan Architecture and Urbanism," contain all you'd ever want or need to know about architecture and the organization of the city. The facts are dazzling and numbing, the photos nostalgia-inducing.
N. White and E. Willensky
(eds)
AIA Guide to New York
(Macmillan/Harcourt Brace). Perhaps even more than the above, the definitive contemporary guide to the city's architecture, far more interesting than it sounds, and useful as an on-site reference.
Gerard R. Wolfe
New York: A Guide to the Metropolis
(McGraw-Hill, US). Set up as a walking tour, this is a little more academic - and less opinionated - than others, but it does include some good stuff on the outer boroughs. Also informed historical background.
