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MIT and Regional Interest

  • Designing MIT
    Mark M. Jarzombek

    A generously illustrated account of artistic clashes, bureaucratic tangles, and contemporary politics that accompanied the design and building of MIT’s Cambridge campus.

  • Building Old Cambridge
    Susan E. Maycock
    Charles M. Sullivan

    An extensively illustrated, comprehensive exploration of the architecture and development of Old Cambridge from colonial settlement to bustling intersection of town and gown.

  • Girls Coming to Tech!
    Amy Sue Bix

    How women coped with both formal barriers and informal opposition to their entry into the traditionally masculine field of engineering in American higher education.

  • A Second Modernism
    Arindam Dutta

    An account of architecture’s postwar ambition to transform itself into a research-oriented and technologically complex discipline of design expertise.

  • The Hub's Metropolis
    James C. O'Connell

    The evolution of the Boston metropolitan area, from country villages and streetcar suburbs to exurban sprawl and “smart growth.”

  • A Widening Sphere
    Philip N. Alexander

    How MIT’s first nine presidents helped transform the Institute from a small technical school into a major research university.

  • Mens et Mania
    Samuel Jay Keyser

    A memoir of MIT life, from being Noam Chomsky’s boss to negotiating with student protesters.

  • Nightwork
    Institute Historian T. F. Peterson

    A lively introduction to MIT hacks, from the police car on the Great Dome to the abduction of the Caltech cannon.

  • Becoming MIT
    David Kaiser

    The evolution of MIT, as seen in a series of crucial decisions over the years.

  • Gaining Ground
    Nancy S. Seasholes

    Why and how Boston was transformed by landmaking.

MIT and Regional Interest

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Nightwork, Updated Edition

A History of Hacks and Pranks at MIT
By

An MIT "hack" is an ingenious, benign, and anonymous prank or practical joke, often requiring engineering or scientific expertise and often pulled off under cover of darkness—instances of campus mischief sometimes coinciding with April Fool’s Day, final exams, or commencement.

A Widening Sphere

Evolving Cultures at MIT
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MIT was founded in 1861 as a polytechnic institute in Boston's Back Bay, overshadowed by its neighbor across the Charles River, Harvard University. Harvard offered a classical education to young men ofAmerica's ruling class; the early MIT trained men (and a few women) from all parts of society as engineers for the nation's burgeoning industries. Over theyears, MIT expanded its mission and ventured into other fields—pure science, social science, the humanities—and established itself in Cambridge as Harvard's enduring rival.

Imagining MIT

Designing a Campus for the Twenty-First Century
By

In the 1990s, MIT began a billion-dollar building program that transformed its outdated, run-down campus into an architectural showplace. Funded by the high-tech boom of the 1990s and and driven by a pent-up demand for new space, MIT's ambitious rebuilding produced five major works of architecture: Kevin Roche's Zesiger Sports and Fitness Center, Steven Holl's Simmons Hall, Frank Gehry's Stata Center, Charles Correa's Brain and Cognitive Science Complex, and Fumihiko Maki's still-unrealized project for the Media Laboratory.

Learning to Communicate in Science and Engineering

Case Studies from MIT
By , and

To many science and engineering students, the task of writing may seem irrelevant to their future professional careers. At MIT, however, students discover that writing about their technical work is important not only in solving real-world problems but also in developing their professional identities.

The Chomsky Effect

A Radical Works Beyond the Ivory Tower
By

“People are dangerous. If they’re able to involve themselves in issues that matter, they may change the distribution of power, to the detriment of those who are rich and privileged.”--Noam Chomsky

Fresh Pond

The History of a Cambridge Landscape
By

Fresh Pond Reservation, at the northwest edge of Cambridge, Massachusetts, has been described as a “landscape loved to death.” Certainly it is a landscape that has been changed by its various uses over the years and one to which Cantabridgeans and Bostonians have felt an intense attachment.

Walking Tours of Boston's Made Land

By

At its founding, Boston was a small peninsula; over the last 375 years the city has doubled in size by filling in the surrounding tidal flats—areas covered with water at high tide and exposed at low. In Walking Tours of Boston's Made Land, historian Nancy Seasholes outlines twelve walks that trace where and why Boston's man-made land was created, and, along the way, uncovers fascinating and little-known pieces of Boston history.

Mind and Hand

The Birth of MIT
By and

The motto on the seal of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, "Mens et Manus"—"mind and hand"—signals the Institute's dedication to what MIT founder William Barton Rogers called "the most earnest cooperation of intelligent culture with industrial pursuits." Mind and Hand traces the ideas about science and education that have shaped MIT and defined its mission—from the new science of the Enlightenment era and the ideals of representative democracy spurred by the Industrial Revolution to new theories on the nature and role of higher education in nineteenth-century America.

Building Stata

The Design and Construction of Frank O. Gehry's Stata Center at MIT
By

This stunning, lavishly illustrated book chronicles the entire planning and construction process of the Frank Gehry-designed Ray and Maria Stata Center at MIT.

Jerry Wiesner, Scientist, Statesman, Humanist

Memories and Memoirs
Edited by Judy Rosenblith

The recurring theme in Jerry Wiesner's varied and distinguished career was what Senator Edward M. Kennedy calls in the foreword to this book a "passionate involvement to make a better world, and a safer world." His odyssey as a public citizen included work as an acoustician for folklorist Alan Lomax in the Library of Congress, research at MIT's Radiation Lab and at Los Alamos, service as President John F. Kennedy's Special Assistant for Science and Technology, and his years at MIT as professor, dean, provost, and president.

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