TOP OF THE CITY New York’s Hidden Rooftop World<i> By Laura Rosen (Thames & Hudson: $19.95) </i>

The elaborate tops of Manhattan’s skyscrapers were created to proclaim the wealth and power of the city to visitors who would see the distant pinnacles from approaching ocean liners. Laura Rosen offers a loving portrait of these architectural extravagances, which range from the dramatic (the clustered finials on the General Electric Building on Lexington Avenue) and elegant (the arcs and triangles of the Chrysler Building) to the bizarre (a stone rabbit mask atop Upper Broadway’s Bunny Theatre) and kitsch (the hilarious terra-cotta pastiche of the colossus of Rameses II on the old Knights of Pythias temple on West 70th St.). These dramatic photographs suggest that architecture was both more interesting and entertaining before the drearily rectilinear modern box became the standard urban form.