Diners, Bowling Alleys, and Trailer Parks: Chasing the American Dream in Postwar Consumer Culture Review

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(More customer reviews)This is essentially a book of social history, although it brings together the disciplines of economic history, gender studies, architecture, and popular culture. Hurley discusses how diners, bowling alleys, and trailer parks reflected the social values of the 1950s and 1960s. The chapters on the three building types go into excruciating detail; for example, every nuance of diner design and operation is discussed and scrutinized for meaning. The book would have been improved if the author had covered more building types in the same number of pages.
Hurley's overriding theme is laudable: On the outskirts of most towns, there is a region that constituted that community's "commercial strip" during the 1950s and 1960s, before America discovered fast food, shopping malls, and big-box stores. Most of us drive through these past-their-prime commercial strips every day, seeing nothing but obsolete buildings. Hurley points out that these obsolete commercial strips are the equivalent of archeological sites, speaking volumes about how family values have evolved during the past half-century.

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Lost Rights: The Misadventures of a Stolen American Relic Review

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(More customer reviews)Lost Rights is an enjoyable read. When the Declaration of Independence was first proposed to the original 13 states North Carolina objected stating that it didn't go far enough to protect personal freedoms. This led to the Bill of Rights which secured those freedoms. It was adopted and one of three government clerks wrote out a copy for each state and a 14th copy for the Federal government. During the Civil War one of Sherman's soldiers stole North Carolina's copy and took it back home to Ohio. He quickly sold it and it was handed down through three generations of one family for the next 134 years. That's the Cliff Notes version but Howard provides a very detailed, sometimes almost too detailed, account of the document's journey back to North Carolina. There's a salty cast of characters who play their parts along the way. Howard gives us a behind the scenes take on the world of rare documents buying and selling. I was saddened to read that far too many state and federal documents have been lost, destroyed by accident, war, and carelessness and worst of all stolen, sometimes by the people charged with protecting them though for the most part that's an anomaly. Ironically in order to provide the provenance of this particular Bill of Rights several seemingly valueless documents were required. A careful documents clerk's distinctive markings clinched it as North Carolina's copy.Howard emphasized that though this physical object is important more important are its words and what they mean for us as a country and individuals. He includes a quote from a fellow journalist, Mark Bowden, who said, "Any nation is, at heart, an idea."

I recently read Wittman's book "Priceless" about his career in the FBI specializing in stolen art objects and his account of his part in recovering this Bill of Rights dovetails with Howard's though Howard's is far more detailed.


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Bowling Across America: 50 States in Rented Shoes Review

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(More customer reviews)This is the true story of a man who does what many in their late 20's always dream about, wander with a purpose. The author is a man in his late 20s, several years into the grind of life, who experiences the death of his father. This leads him to analyze his own life and is the catalyst for an adventure his father first started but was interrupted by life (work, family etc.) Walsh's dry wit and insights keeps the narrative moving along and is what separates this from a standard tale of a "quarter life crisis." I laughed out loud on a dozen different occasions.
"Bowling..." does a wonderful job capturing the angst, dilemmas and sources of happiness that is so typical of that segment of life. Walsh does a masterful job weaving in past experiences into the present that paints a wonderful self-portrait and offers the reader ample opportunity to relate. Scattered throughout are some wonderful insights on bowling, life, family and relationships. This is a great read.


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Readymades: American Roadside Artifacts Review

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(More customer reviews)Yet another roadie book but `Readymades' is a cut above the usual photographic selection of what can be seen along the nation's back roads. For a start the book is landscape, just the right shape for images that are basically horizontal. Secondly the photos are divided into sections rather than loosely hung together by state or date order. Thirdly the choice of material is refreshing, for example, tract housing, freight cars, trailers or storage units (no kidding).
This is Jeff Brouws second road book, his first, the excellent `Highway: America's Endless Dream', was more the traditional photographic road book, a mixture of everything plus a selection of interesting black and white images from the thirties and forties. I like the formal arrangement of `Readymades'. By having each of the eleven chapters devoted to a particular theme he "presents the subject in the most factual terms possible" as Diana Gaston says in her intro. The chapters are tract housing, signs, abandoned drive-ins, farms, pickups, abandoned gas stations, boxcars, signs two, trailers, bowling and finally storage units.
Partially painted pickup trucks are just that, twenty-five of them are all taken side on and nicely framed within the image area. Twenty-six abandoned gas stations (in black and white) are one to a page and just the sort of thing Robert Frank would have stopped his car for back in the fifties. Freight cars, again one to a page and neatly framed, are an amazing colored selection of various shades of rust and railroad livery. Perhaps the most unusual chapter is storage units, hardly the sort of thing to capture the creative eye but here they are, eighteen shots including a stunning one taken in West Virginia in 2001 showing three power station cooling towers in the distance, the storage units in the middle and a parking lot in the foreground. The photos of these units remind me of Lewis Baltz and his photos of the industrial parks in Irvine, CA, simple oblongs just placed in the landscape.
`Readymades' is a refreshing look and presentation of the vernacular everyday and I think it might well turn out to be a classic photo book of the decade.
***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.

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