These are LEGO idea books, that require you to have a pretty good collection of LEGO bricks, or willingness to buy some, if you want to follow the builds closely. But what you really want to do is to use the build instructions to guide your thinking about what is possible, likely, or difficult, and how to approach the overall problem of building a small village right now that you can put under your holiday tree next week. Most of the creative energy in these books is in display of galleries of great builds photographed very nicely.

The books are sensitive to architectural style (Ameroican Colonial, Art Ceco, etc.) and how they might be combined to make a realistic urban landscape. The second volume has a section on microcities, where you build at the smallest possible scale.

Brian Lyles is a professional videographer who runs Brick City Depot, an online repository of over 50 detailed LEGO building instructions. When not running Brick City Depot with his brother Brian, Jason Lyles works as a software developer. The brothers live in Richmond, VA.

Author Jeff Friesen is a famous LEGO builder, and a photographer, who tweets at @jeff_works.

You get an idea of how to build skyscraper, bridges, public transit elements, and tightly packed downtown zones. There are suggestions for how to build the geology that underlies the buildings and other infrastructure. And the subways.

The author suggests where to buy bricks, including used bricks that work just fine. But you can also use the bricks you have, and modify the design. Or, really, use the gestalt to become a better creator of your own entirely novel things, which I think is the real purpose of all this sort of book. Theory.

This is a fun book, and great holiday gift to accompany a LEGO building set.