PDF Download The Lawn: A History of an American Obsession, by Virginia Scott Jenkins
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The Lawn: A History of an American Obsession, by Virginia Scott Jenkins
PDF Download The Lawn: A History of an American Obsession, by Virginia Scott Jenkins
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From Publishers Weekly
In the 18th-century English landscape, a folly was an extravagant building or ruin. In the 20th-century American landscape, the folly had to be the lawn. Jenkins's account gets off to a slightly slow start as she follows the lawn from its earliest beginnings as a simplified version of English romantic parks in the 19th century to the smooth fairway aesthetic fostered by the U.S. Golf Association (USGA) in the early 20th. But from then on, The Lawn is a quirky, thoroughly enjoyable look at man vs. nature, man vs. woman, and man vs. the Joneses. Despite the millions spent by both the USDA (U.S. Department of Agriculture) and USGA to develop hardy disease- and pest-resistant turf for any climate, it did not obviate the need for tons of toxic herbicides and pesticides, gallons of water (even in the arid Southwest) and, as a 1952 article in Life said, the basics--"bamboo rake, grass shears, hand sprayer . . . wave sprinkler, a hoe, wheelbarrow, roller, iron rake, lawn mower and spade, an aerator, a weed knife." It was an arsenal, and Jenkins makes a convincing argument that the military metaphors used by advertisers and lawn-care experts alike were part of a male viewpoint that saw nature as something to be "controlled and mastered." It wasn't long before that controlled lawn, once a sign of affluence, became the strictly enforced norm of good citizenship and general moral rectitude. This summer could be much more fun if readers ignore their own lawns and stick to Jenkins's. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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From The New Yorker
Virginia Scott Jenkins shows that this uniquely American landscape form is not a native one: indigenous New World grasses were munched into extinction by the colonists' Old World livestock, and the very concept of the lawn was borrowed from the romantic English parks of Capability Brown and from the French tapis vert. But gradual suburbanization and the shaming tactics of appearance-minded neighbors led America to become completely besotted with grass---and lawn care
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Product details
Paperback: 246 pages
Publisher: Smithsonian Books (April 17, 1994)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1560984066
ISBN-13: 978-1560984061
Product Dimensions:
6 x 0.6 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
4.4 out of 5 stars
3 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#951,858 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Reading this history of lawns sent me back to Currier and Ives, where I found that, indeed, there was little grass and lots of chickens around the family homestead. This is a likeable rediscovery of how our need to conform to standardized appearances has shaped our markets and our vision of democracy.
This book describes the history of how lawns were first introduced to American, became popular, and then became a necessity. Jenkins traces the early history of lawns as importations of the English country garden concept, as found in Jefferson's gardens in Monticello. She also explains the influences that garden clubs, the golf industry, and the USDA had on the popularization of lawns. The book is not just about lawns, however. It also provides a very interesting analysis of how advertising was used to create demand for completely unnecessary products, and how those products, such as lawn mowers and weed whackers, later came to be thought of as indispensable. This book will be of interest to historians of landscape architecture as well as to researchers of material culture.
Anyone interested in how lawns came to be the "norm" and a standard signifier of upward mobility in America will find this book fascinating. For those who would like to encourage a different urban form (less lawns, houses closer to the street, new urbanism or smart growth) the book offers some hope by its demonstration of how something so "natural" was constructed over the last 80-100 years. The roles of technology, science, and gender politics, as well as class issues and environmental concerns are covered in a way that makes the story more entertaining and underscores the numerous fronts through which the lawn aesthetic was reinforced. I found this to be a great contribution to our understanding of how one element of the bigger picture contributes to larger trends affecting human settlement patterns, the ways we interact with each other and experience community, and even our public health. Now I need to read the history "air conditioning in america" to understand the role of that element....most cultural and social histories certainly cite issues like lawns and air conditioning as part of the dynamics, but don't have the time or space to examine the issue in depth-- its great that Jenkins does this, even if it was a dissertation (and heck, that's one of the things dissertations are actually useful for...).
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