Feathering your nest.

That’s what it feels like every year, as you get the natural urge to spiff up your surroundings. And what better way to do it, than with a few new books for inspiration and instruction?

Start with a look at home ownership, and why we want our own land. Read “Property Values: The Rise and Fall of the American Homeowner” by Joshua Specht (Princeton University Press, $35), a book about how our love of a plot of dirt has evolved. It’s a fascinating story of finance, racism, and history, great for anyone who owns a bit of real estate.

If you’ve ever looked around at the buildings in your neighborhood, then “Our World in Ten Buildings: How Architecture Defines Who We Are and How We Live” by Michael P. Murphy (One Signal Publishers, $30) might be an eye-opener. How does a hospital building make us feel a certain way, different than, say, a church? Why aren’t prisons built like malls? Read this book, and you’ll never look at a building the same way again.

If you’re someone who thinks that there’s treasure in soil, you’ll be delighted by “Things We Found in the Ground” by Ellie Bruce and Lucie Gray (Sourcebooks, $19.99). Bruce and Gray are cousins who liked to hunt for buried treasure on their grandfather’s land, and their two-decade hobby didn’t amount to much until the day they hit, um, paydirt. If you have a metal detector and you love using it, this is a book you’ll really dig.

Here’s another book about things on the ground: “Sidewalk Nation: The Life and Law of America’s Most Overlooked Resource” by Michael Pollack (Harvard University Press, $35). Reading about sidewalks might sound odd, but Pollack explains why knowing about those trails of concrete is important. It includes politics, the Constitution, history, and good neighborliness, and what you’ll learn is fascinating and unforgettable. Ditto with “Transportation and the Shape of Cities” by Christof Spieler, David Copeland Loredo, and Mandi Chapa (Princeton Press, $35), a book that looks at five of the country’s bigger cities, to show how transportation and city infrastructure go hand-in-hand. All those streets in your town? Yeah, they’re intentional. Bonus: lots of graphs and drawings.

And finally, mortgage rates and housing have been big topics lately, and “The Other Housing Crisis: Ending the deterioration and Loss of Affordable Homes,” edited by Todd Swanstrom, A. T. Harrison, and Alan Mallach (Princeton Press, $32) may be the book you need if you need to understand why. How did we get here? More importantly, how do we get out of today’s housing crisis? This book may have the answers you seek…

And if these books aren’t enough to satisfy your curiosity, or if you want books on decorating or remodeling, head for your favorite bookstore or library and ask for help. The staffs there might not be able to swing a hammer or saw a board, but they can put the right resource in your hands, so you can feather your nesting area right.

Homes, Buildings, Architecture and Cities, books by various authors
c.2026, various publishers
$19.99-$35
various page counts