Download e-book for kindle: Landscape and Images by John R. Stilgoe

John Stilgoe is simply taking a look round. this is often tougher than it sounds,
rather in our mediated age, whilst advances in either idea and expertise too usually search to
exchange the visible facts prior to our personal eyes instead of supplement it. we're surrounded by
landscapes charged with our prior, and but from our earliest schooldays we're prompt now not to
stare out the window. anyone who stops to seem isn’t just a rarity; she or he is
suspect.

Landscape and Images files an entire life spent observing
America’s built landscapes. Stilgoe’s essays stick with the eclectic trains of
suggestion that experience resulted from his remark, from the postcard choice for sunsets over
sunrises to the idea that of "teen geography" to the unwillingness of american citizens to stroll up and
down stairs. In Stilgoe's arms, the topic of jack o’ lanterns turns into an celebration to
discover centuries-old thoughts of limitations and trespassing, and to check why this originally
pagan image has continued into our personal age. Even whatever as mundane as placing the cat out
sooner than going to mattress is traced again to fears of unwatched animals and an untended frontier
hearth. Stilgoe ponders the forgotten connections among politics and painted landscapes and
asks why a rustic whose overwhelming majority lives under 100 miles from a coast nonetheless
appears to be like to the agricultural Midwest for the vintage snapshot of itself.

At instances breathtaking in
their erudition, the essays amassed listed below are as meticulously researched as they're elegantly
written. Stilgoe’s observations communicate to specialists—whether they be artists, historians,
or environmental designers—as good as to the typical reader. Our landscapes represent a
interesting historical past of coincidence and rationale. The facts, says Stilgoe, is throughout us.