Haiti Now, edited by Thom Mayne and Eui-Sung Yi. The Now Institute, 2014, 732 pages, $40 (paper).

Open City: Existential Urbanity: The Architecture of the City Studio 2001–2014, by Diane Lewis. Charta, June 2015, 368 pages, $75.

If you’ve ever felt like a slacker, neither of these books will help. You’ll know even before you open them—one weighs 4.4 pounds; the other, more than 7—that they represent thousands of hours of painstaking effort. Among their creators are the dynamos Thom Mayne (of Morphosis) and Diane Lewis (of Diane Lewis Architect), and students at the architecture schools where these practitioners somehow find time to teach.