Unique Books and Gifts

From Portland's most acclaimed and beloved baker comes this must-have baking guide, featuring recipes for world-class breads and pizzas and a variety of schedules suited for the home baker.

Ashley Wolfgang Newsletter Editor

This colorful, lively book is Gastro Obscura writer Priya Krishna’s loving tribute to her mom’s “Indian-ish” cooking—a trove of one-of-a-kind Indian-American hybrids that are easy to make, clever, practical, and packed with flavor.

Alex Mayyasi Gastro Obscura Editor

In this award-winning book, photographer Mark Edward Harris celebrates the Japanese hot spring, an endless source of both visual and visceral pleasure.

Renowned artist and author Maira Kalman and food writer Barbara Scott-Goodman bring us this beautifully illustrated book dedicated to their love of cake.

Artist Amir Zaki photographed skateparks all over Southern California, the birthplace of skateboard culture. His images depict these parks as significant features of the contemporary landscape, belonging to a tradition of architecture and public art.

Internationally-renowned photographer Matt Lambros traveled across the United States to document the country's abandoned theaters—from the supposedly haunted Pacific Warner Theatre in Los Angeles to the Orpheum Theatre in New Bedford, MA. 

This is a endearing story with wonderful vintage photos of two women who risked travel unchaperoned at a time when women were not encouraged to be independent, often donning men’s clothing and cowboy hats, and joyfully handling cameras, guns, and kingsnakes in the California desert.

This delightful, debut children's book by former Atlas Obscura staff writer Sarah Laskow answers important unicorn questions like why are unicorns associated with rainbows, why do some unicorns have wings, and—of course—are unicorns real? 

A beautiful book written by Dan Barasch, the Co-Founder of the Lowline with a forward by Atlas Obscura co-founder Dylan Thuras, Ruin and Redemption in Architecture offers an extraordinary portrait of monumental abandoned spaces around the world and explores the possibilities to radically transform them.

Tyler Cole VP, Community

Penned by an impassioned ichthyologist, this book is a surprisingly amusing and delightfully obscure read.

Larissa Hayden

Color-changing, camouflaging, ink-cloud concealing cephalopods are basically the closest thing we have on earth to real-life shapeshifters. I loved learning all about these mysterious creatures from cephalopod expert—and AO trip leader—Sarah MacAnulty, all while calmly coloring the tentacles of a giant squid. 

Rachel Bouton Program Manager, Group and Co-Branded Experiences

Sink into an armchair and cozy up to this special book filled with colorful flap caps, scarves, and rare mitten patterns. Through the work captured in this book, the two local authors aim to keep the tradition and culture of Newfoundland knitting alive.

Tao Tao Holmes Director of Special Projects, Experiences

This newly annotated edition of the classic wrests the text from English majors and hands it to STEMers, but also brings the concerns of literature—moral weight, literary device, creativity—to readers at risk of underestimating their importance.

Whether you’re a veteran backcountry skier or a backyard builder, this instructive yet whimsical manual will take you through the process of constructing and inhabiting a range of useful snow structures.

Larissa Hayden

Are those human molars or piranha incisors? Is that a tail or a snout? Are the eyeballs supposed to be on the back of the head, and why are they different sizes? These are all valid questions to ask when leafing through this unconventional, pocket-size coffee table book—guaranteed to draw...

Tao Tao Holmes Director of Special Projects, Experiences

The perfect gift for your favorite member of The Finer Things Club, this “Anecdotal History of Elegant Delights” covers everything from Aerostation, i.e. the art of hot air ballooning to Xiguo Jifa, the art of memory.

Tyler Cole VP, Community

Written by Culinary Backstreets, the cohosts of our food tour of Istanbul, this book is the definitive guide to eating locally and authentically in the Turkish metropolis.

Tao Tao Holmes Director of Special Projects, Experiences

What is this? A room for ants? This book captures the Thorne Rooms at the Art Institute of Chicago—68 miniature models of European and American interiors from the 16th century.

Abi Inman Senior Audience Development Manager

What better way to stay in touch with the far corners of capitalism than by having obscure industry trade journals sent to your door? My last issues of Elevator World and American Laundry News were positively scintillating.

Joshua Foer Co-Founder

There's nothing like a few drinks to bring a bookclub together, and even better if they're literary themed. With concoctions classically entitled Vermouth the Bell Tolls and Romeo and Julep, you'll get the bookworm party started right.

Jordan Schultz Director of Marketing & Audience

“Humboldt was a 19th century explorer, philosopher, and a father of the environmental movement. This is the first facsimile of all his explorer journals.” — Russell Fernandez, New York City, New York

“I love to cook world flavors, and to travel (hence why I enjoy Atlas Obscura), so this looks like it will go into detail about different world cuisines—the history, geography, ingredients, and how they came to be.” — Sorelle, Santa Rosa, California

“It's a revamped (pun intended) RPG system. It looks easy to play, and a game I want to get my friends and family in on too.” — Leslie Smith, Nashville, Tennessee

A hilarious and practical guide by the creator of Dinosaur Comics and writer of Adventure Time, Ryan North! In just 464 pages, you'll learn how to quickly replicate humanity's achievements, just in case you ever accidentally get sent back in time.

Larissa Hayden

Armchair travel meets tin foil hats in this gorgeously designed book documenting sites around the U.S. where UFOs have been spotted. It’s a photographic road trip through E.T. visitation past and present.

Blake Olmstead Head of Design

A beautifully illustrated book featuring knots for every occasion. Handy instruction for everything from pitching a tent to tying a package.

Perfect for the budding birder, this workbook includes stickers for each of the 48 most common North American birds and encourages you to record the date and details of each sighting.

New York City today is an elegantly congested urban mess, a largely ad hoc group of skyscrapers, highways, avenues, and pedestrian walkways. But if some of the architects in Never Built New York had their way, New York might be a wholly different place, with buildings built over the city’s...

In the recent past, owning a copy of Les Diners de Gala, Salvador Dali’s rare and eccentric cookbook, cost upwards of $400. Now you can buy it for much less, thanks to a Taschen reprint. With recipes ranging from fast-acting cocktails to lambs brain with avocado to a royal peacock...

From early computer programmers to the “girl gamers” of the 1990s, Claire Evans does an incredible job of highlighting the important women who are often left out of conventional tellings of internet history. I just finished this book and can see their influence everywhere now—not just in the internet as...

Lex Berko Senior Editor

When I thought of a hermit, I used to imagine a Biblical figure living in the desert. Then I learned about Christopher Knight, who may be history’s greatest hermit (27 years with almost zero human contact) despite living within shouting distance of Maine vacation homes from the ‘80s through the...

Alex Mayyasi Gastro Obscura Editor

Like the air we breath, it can be easy to overlook something as everyday as milk. Luckily, author Mark Kurlansky has not made that mistake. This book covers everything from Fidel Castro’s obsession with dairy and ice cream, which led the CIA to attempt to assassinate him with a poisonous...

Alex Mayyasi Gastro Obscura Editor

This is a stunningly detailed pop-up book that can morph into a planetarium, an infinite calendar, a message encoder, and more. Super cool.

Blake Olmstead Head of Design

Use the red cellophane magnifying glass included in this artful book to reveal the secrets behind a number of beautifully illustrated scientific specimens, historical objects, and antique objet d’art.

Blake Olmstead Head of Design

Behind every almost famous artist, scientist, explorer, or entrepreneur is a story in many ways more interesting than that of their more celebrated kin. This book explores the saga of near achievement while celebrating mankind's silver medalists.

This gorgeous book traces how humans have attempted to understand the cosmos through the ages. Explore ancient astronomical charts, medieval illuminations of the heavens, supercomputer renderings of the structure of the universe, and hundreds more illustrations, maps, and diagrams that range from antiquity to the present day.

Daniel Sobo Head of Engineering

As a person that grew up in Northern New Jersey, I have long been fascinated by the ecosystem known as the Meadowlands, but didn’t know all that much about it. Robert Sullivan’s book gave me a whole new appreciation for these often maligned wetlands, their flora and fauna, and their...

Lex Berko Senior Editor

What Annie Leibowitz is to celebrities, Beth Moon is to trees. She takes gorgeous black-and-white photos the world's most charismatic trees, from the General Grant to the Bleeding Yew of Nevern to the Dragon's Blood trees of Socotra.

David Plotz CEO

Clear, beautifully rendered illustrations and vivid descriptions make this book my absolute favorite guide to bird identification—I never travel without mine.

Blake Olmstead Head of Design

Atlas Obscura co-founder Joshua Foer's yearlong quest to improve his memory reminds us that, in every way that matters, we are the sum of our memories.

I picked up this 500+ page book about the history of the Brooklyn Bridge intending to skim for mentions of one of my personal heroes—Emily Roebling—but found myself sucked into the narrative and ended up reading the whole thing cover to cover. It’s an epic story, masterfully told.

Ariel Azoff Executive Director, Brand Partnerships

Filled with non-stop curiosities about an oddly notable summer in which, among many other happenings, Lindbergh completed his transatlantic flight; The Jazz Singer was released; and the first public demonstration of the television occurred.

Nathan Igdaloff

A fascinating collection of eyewitness accounts from the first Europeans who encountered, and attempted to describe, a wide range of animals, plants, foods, and people, and a healthy reminder of how wrong first impressions can be.

Chris Naka Director, Creative Development

A detailed account of the ocean’s most frightening mystery.

Eric Grundhauser Senior Producer

With approximately 3,000 color photographs taken between 1942 and 1945, these rarities—now over 70 years old—bring an unexpected immediacy and intimacy to the conflict.

Anika Burgess Visuals Editor

Often overlooked as tourist destinations, cemeteries deserve a new life in the eyes of the traveler. This book pays respect to the incredible architecture, stunning landscapes, and intriguing histories of those oft-ignored spaces around the globe that exist to celebrate and honor life.

Blake Olmstead Head of Design

Informed by visits to 39 sanatoriums across 11 former Eastern Bloc countries, this book details both the architecture and attendees of these state-mandated vacation destinations.

Serious scientific answers to absurd hypothetical questions. For example, how many calories would you consume by eating this book?

Full-color instructions for building a LEGO robin, hummingbird, blue jay, and 12 other detailed aviary designs.