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| View Larger Image | The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape
by James Howard Kunstler
| | List Price: | $15.00 | | Price: | $10.20 | | You Save: | $4.80 (32%) |  | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours | | | | | Sales Rank: | 48591 | | Studio: | Free Press | | | Binding: | Paperback | | Number Of Pages: | 304 | | Publication Date: | July 26, 1994 | | Publisher: | Free Press |
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
The Geography of Nowhere traces America's evolution from a nation of Main Streets and coherent communities to a land where every place is like no place in particular, where the cities are dead zones and the countryside is a wasteland of cartoon architecture and parking lots.In elegant and often hilarious prose, Kunstler depicts our nation's evolution from the Pilgrim settlements to the modern auto suburb in all its ghastliness. The Geography of Nowhere tallies up the huge economic, social, and spiritual costs that America is paying for its car-crazed lifestyle. It is also a wake-up call for citizens to reinvent the places where we live and work, to build communities that are once again worthy of our affection. Kunstler proposes that by reviving civic art and civic life, we will rediscover public virtue and a new vision of the common good. "The future will require us to build better places," Kunstler says, "or the future will belong to other people in other societies." |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 49 reviews)
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Angry, left wing slant to this book..... 
I've only read a few chapters of this book but I can already get a sense of the author's left wing political leanings. He seems to think that cars are the root of all evil. (Just like author Jared Diamond seems to blame everything on deforestation--see his books).
Kunstler's book is also filled with bits of meaningless prose which seem to reflect some sort of personal ax to grind. Here's an example from page 219:
"Even after he became a showbiz mogul, Walt Disney's world view remained that of a provincial midwesterner, whether it was his idea of the jungle (ooga booga), or of space travel (gee whiz), or of U.S. history (I pledge allegiance...)."
I don't understand Kunstler's point here. There's a vaguely critical tone towards people from the midwest in this sentence but what is his point? What purpose does the gibberish "ooga booga" serve in this sentence? What does "gee whiz" mean? Is Kunstler trying to mock people who are impressed by the achievement of space travel as somehow being provincial? That's just silly. Being in awe of space travel is obviously not restricted to people born in midwest. What exactly is Kunstler's point? What is the purpose of putting "I pledge allegiance" in brackets in this sentence? Is this some sort of criticism of the pledge of allegiance as somehow being "provincial"?.
I find this sort of meaningless prose annoying. I'll probably skim read the rest of the book just for the interesting tidbits.
June 21, 2008 | |
An Excellent Overview of America's Growth Culture 
JHK puts together an excellent overview of the forces and personalities that defined today's American lifestyle and culture. It condenses four centuries of history, architecture, and science to create a sort of family tree of who we are as a nation and draws the map of how we got here. Not everything is perfect -- IMO he disparages Walt Disney unfairly -- but overall it is a good read that puts many of today's events in perspective.
April 01, 2008 | |
Superb Diagnosis of the dysfunctional American land use situation 
Fantastic book about modern American society. One of the best. Specifically addresses what's wrong with our living spaces, and how our ideas of Americanism lead to the zoning codes that define housing development. Well told in Kunstler's sharp and descriptive style of American prose.
This is the diagnosis and the companion book, Home From Nowhere, is the cure. People who want to take positive social action to improve their neighborhoods must read these books.
One of the few flaws in this book, however, is the short shrift that Kunstler gives to urban crime as a motivation for the masses fleeing to the suburbs. The matter is touched upon, but inadequately so. To some extent this is a problem of the whole movement known as "the New Urbanism--" a certain reluctance to speak frankly about the reality of crime and widely held perceptions about racial conflict in society. However perhaps this flaw is understandable in light of the thought-controlling fashions of "political correctness" and, at a deeper level, how the voices of developers, architects, lawyers, and other social commentators have been chilled by the overzealous enforcement of the 1965 Fair Housing Act.
Besides that one weakness, this is the strongest book on the topic I know of for the general public. It surpassed my expectations and I've picked it up again and again.
I thank the author for this work.
March 05, 2008 | |
A life-changing book
This book still stays with me vividly after first reading it in college more than a decade ago. There are so many insidious ways our landscape and city planning shape us, for better or worse, and this beautiful book is a plea for a saner way to build, or rebuild, our cities. Makes me all the more grateful to live in Portland, Oregon, possibly the most incredibly laid out city this country has ever seen or will ever.
January 28, 2008 | |
A few oddities, but good.
This is the first book I have read dealing with urban planning and development, and it has opened my eyes to a lot of things that could be done better. My wife and I have talked before about how much we would like to live in a city with good public transportation where we wouldn't need a car, and Kunstler helps me understand why we have those kinds of feelings deep down. We all enjoy being in places that are built on a human scale, where you can actually accomplish something as a person rather than flying by everything in your car.
My main criticism of this book is that he makes some very strong, negative statements about Christianity that in my opinion have nothing to do with his argument, and which are mostly incorrect. In particular, he says several times that various Christian people or groups of people have helped cause the decline of the American landscape because of their beliefs relating to the end times. He makes this accusation against everyone from the Puritan settlers to Ronald Reagan. As an ordained Southern Baptist minister, I know a lot about evangelical eschatology and I haven't got a clue why it would drive anyone to build freeways and shopping malls. I think the real spiritual problems involved in destroying American towns and cities are greed and pride, not faith in Christ.
Still, a reader with half a brain will be able to look past Kunstler's occasional baseless rants and see that he makes a lot of really helpful points. I wish that every mayor and city zoning commissioner in America would read this book and take to heart the idea of building meaningful places on a human scale.
October 31, 2007 | |
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