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Overview
What connections can be drawn between oral history and the shopping mall? Gospel music and the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant? William Carlos Williams's Patterson and the Manhattan Project's secret cities? The answers lie in this insightful collection of essays that read and illuminate the American landscape. Through literature and folklore, music and oral history, autobiography, architecture, and photography, eleven leading writers and thinkers explore the dialectic between space and place in modern American life. The result is an eloquent and provocative reminder of the environmental context of events—the deceptively simple fact that events “take place.”
Synopsis
What connections can be drawn between oral history and the shopping mall? Gospel music and the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant? William Carlos Williams's Patterson and the Manhattan Project's secret cities? The answers lie in this insightful collection of essays that read and illuminate the American landscape. Through literature and folklore, music and oral history, autobiography, architecture, and photography, eleven leading writers and thinkers explore the dialectic between space and place in modern American life. The result is an eloquent and provocative reminder of the environmental context of events—the deceptively simple fact that events “take place.”
Booknews
Eleven original essays address the ways in which space has worked to condition everyday life as well as the "grand actions" of American experience, reading the American landscape through literature, folklore, music, oral history, autobiography, architecture, and photography. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Editorials
From the Publisher
“This book is a timely and welcome addition to the literature on place and American culture.”—Geographical Review