[alert variation=”alert-info”]Publisher: CreateSpace
Formats: Paperback, Kindle
Purchase: Amazon | IndieBound | Barnes & Noble | iBooks[/alert]

Here is a strange paperback that some readers will love and others won’t read past page three. Poor Richard, Another Almanac for Architects and Planners consists of fifty-two pages of text, one for each week of the year, and a facing black-and-white high-contrast photo illustrations, somewhat related to the subject author Mark David Major selected for that week. Each week has seven brief proverbs or wisdom corresponding to the days of the week. The title of the page defines the subject of the week mostly related to architecture, city planning or cities (the author is a lecturer of architecture).

“Distilled wisdom endures.”

Most of the proverbs are brief enough to fit within the parameter of Twitter’s hundred-and-forty character limit. The book is the second volume of what Major calls the Poor Richard series, and he is working on the third. The foreword, preface, and introductory remarks explain to us the book’s purpose and its odd title. The purpose is to make us contemplate his thought-provoking remarks. The title is inspired from Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Almanac Series. Text superscript numbers refer to notes at the end of the book. A list identifying illustrations follow the notes, and ideally we would prefer to see those as captions or explanations on the same page as the photos.

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