Throughout much of the 20th century, New York’s Nassau and Suffolk counties served as an unlikely laboratory for architectural innovation, welcoming projects by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Richard Neutra, and other thought leaders. That design legacy is now explored in Long Island Modernism: 1930–1980 (W. W. Norton, $80), author Caroline Rob Zaleski’s scholarly survey of the region’s most significant structures, residential and institutional both. Consider it a beach-house must.

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