abandonment communities photography metropolitan

books:

Alongshore
John R. Stilgoe

Yale University Press, 1996

In this enchanting book, John R. Stilgoe takes us on a tour of the seacoast, evoking its sights, sounds, and textures, and showing how it illuminates issues of landscape and American culture. Telling fascinating stories of fishing boats and lighthouses, wharfs and piers, quicksand and buried treasures, this book is ideal beach reading and a guidebook for anyone intrigued by the shore.

Shallow Water Dictionary

7 reviews
John Stilgoe, John R. Stilgoe

Princeton Architectural Press, 2003

It's about seeing
Many who read this will miss the main point. Of course it's about words, but it's more about "seeing" as in "I see." Frost said that he wrote as he wrote so that the wrong people wouldn't get it and be saved. This book has some of that in it. Don't let its almost being a dictionary or the title fool you. John Stilgoe gives it away on page 54 where he says,"Landscape-or seascape-that lacks ...

Metropolitan Corridor: Railroads and the American Scene
John R. Stilgoe

Yale University Press, 1985

Icons: Magnets of Meaning

Chronicle Books, 1997

What do objects mean to us? What messages do they send? What values and lifestyles do they represent? From blue jeans and surfboards to cosmetics and kitchen gadgets, twelve everyday objects are recast as icons -- single, physical forms that embody a complex universe of associations -- and explored as benchmarks for the current state of design. This striking volume accompanies the groundbreaking exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, ...

Common Landscape of America, 1580-1845

1 review
John R. Stilgoe

Yale University Press, 1983

Scholarly History of the American Landscape
This groundbreaking 1982 work by Harvard landscape scholar John Stilgoe remains a standard text for cultural geographers, landscape historians and others interested in historic patterns of development throughout this country. It still has not been equalled in its depth or scope. Stilgoe weaves together an astounding amount of historical detail in a scholarly yet readable style that offers ...

The Scenic Daguerreotype: Romanticism and Early Photography

University Of Iowa Press, 1995

Imagine a "gold and mercury image on a layer of silver bonded to copper," an all-metal photographic process that poisoned some its practitioners. Imagine an era long before a surfeit of images began to dull the viewer, when a visual reality--not a virtual one--captivated the imagination. The daguerreotype process is not only "one of the great artistic vehicles for rendering the human face," says John Wood, but an equally potent and elegant means ...

Outside Lies Magic: Regaining History and Awareness in Everyday Places

16 reviews
John R. Stilgoe, John Stilgoe

Walker & Company, 1999

Fascinating and Enervating
Possibly the most fascinating book I have read since Carl Sagan's "The Dragons of Eden". How often do you read a book that makes you want to get up off your chair (perhaps taking the book with you if you haven't finished yet) and wander off for outside adventures with its tantalizing accounts of what you will find in your neighborhood and town, and their outlying areas?! Stilgoe draws us out ...

Train Time: Railroads and the Imminent Reshaping of the United States Landscape

3 reviews
John R. Stilgoe

University of Virginia Press, 2007

Full of info not found elsewhere
Stilgoe's book is very timely and current. Most railroad writing is backward-looking nostalgia. This is a book about the future, but it finds and brings to light rail successes of the past: Railway Mail Service, Express, frequent passenger service to small towns. Most Americans are oblivious to transportation issues, especially rail. Few give any thought as to how their UPS packages make it ...

Borderland: Origins of the American Suburb, 1820-1939
John R. Stilgoe

Yale University Press, 1990

Joel Sternfeld: Walking the High Line

1 review
John Stilgoe, Adam Gopnik

Steidl/Pace/MacGill Gallery, 2002

Slightly off the beaten tracks
Joel Sternfeld had the right idea when he took photos of Manhattan's High Line in 2000. These are great images of the abandoned railroad and they work so well because you don't really realise that the track is way above street level and now overgrown with all manner of greenery. These photos perhaps give an eerie impression of what Manhattan might look like some months after all the people ...

Lifeboat

1 review
John R. Stilgoe

University of Virginia Press, 2007

Seeing for the first time
Lifeboat, like anything by John Stilgoe, will make you re-examine your views of the past, present, and perhaps even everyday sights and sites you pass routinely without regard.

When the Railroad Leaves Town: American Communities in the Age of Rail Line Abandonment--Western U.S.

2 reviews
Joseph P. Schwieterman

Truman State University Press, 2004

Epilogue to rail
This is an excellent book that goes into detail culturally, economically, politically into the decline and abandonment of rail lines in cities large and small west of the Mississippi River. The author provides excellent background to each account with the reasons why the railroad was built in the first place, what sustained the railroad through its golden years and then factors that contributed ...

Thomas Cole: Drawn to Nature
John R. Stilgoe, III Ellwood C. Parry, ...

Albany Institute of History and Art, 1993

Provides a new look at the founder of the Hudson River School of American landscape painting.

DUPPY STORIES

3 reviews
David Brailsford

LMH Publishing Company, 2001

Outstanding Little book
Loved all of these stories but then again I'm biased - the author is my Dad!! Great stories to be told at family gatherings. The kids love to sit and listen to these tales. Half pretending to be frightened but at the same time thrilling at the gory details of some of them. The adults love the humour of the Jamaican 'old wives tales'. Fascinating insight into the Jamaican culture

Landscape And Images
John R. Stilgoe

University of Virginia Press, 2005

John Stilgoe is just looking around. This is more difficult than it sounds, particularly in our mediated age, when advances in both theory and technology too often seek to replace the visual evidence before our own eyes rather than complement it. We are surrounded by landscapes charged with our past, and yet from our earliest schooldays we are instructed not to stare out the window. Someone who stops to look isn't only a rarity; he or she is ...

The Camera's Coast: Historic Images of Ship and Shore; In New England

1 review
W. H. Bunting

Tilbury House Publishers, 2006

An impressive compilation
Compiled with brief commentaries by W. H. Bunting, "The Camera's Coast: Historic Images Of Ship And Shore In New England" is an impressive compilation of historic period photographs of the ships, communities, industries, advertisements, and people along the coastline of New England in the 19th and early 20th century. An informative introduction by John R. Stilgoe provides a useful context in ...

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