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 suspect. Landscape and Images records a lifetime spent observing America’s constructed landscapes. Stilgoe’s essays follow the eclectic trains of thought that have resulted from his observation, from the postcard preference for sunsets over sunrises to the concept of "teen geography" to the unwillingness of Americans to walk up and down stairs. In Stilgoe's hands, the subject of jack o’ lanterns becomes an occasion to explore centuries-old concepts of boundaries and trespassing, and to examine why this originally pagan symbol has persisted into our own age. Even something as mundane as putting the cat out before going to bed is traced back to fears of unwatched animals and an untended frontier fireplace. Stilgoe ponders the forgotten connections between politics and painted landscapes and asks why a country whose vast majority lives less than a hundred miles from a coast nonetheless looks to the rural Midwest for the classic image of itself.At times breathtaking in their erudition, the essays collected here are as meticulously researched as they are elegantly written. Stilgoe’s observations speak to specialists―whether they be artists, historians, or environmental designers―as well as to the common reader. Our landscapes constitute a fascinating history of accident and intent. The proof, says Stilgoe, is all around us.

Product Description: Cameras float coastward. Almost every old family photograph album contains snapshots of children and sand pails, teenagers frolicking in surf or rowing a rental skiff, young couples half blinded by love and half blinded by beach-reflected sun, mothers with infants shaded by makeshift tents, and old-timers ensconced in folding beach chairs, often shielded by umbrellas...read more

Product Description: Shallow Water Dictionary is both a celebration of the richness of our vernacular language and a lament on its passing – and with it, the passing of the words we need to understand our shallow water regions, once the primary landscape of America and now facing extinction, both physical and linguistic...read more

Presents observations of ordinary things and the art of exploring the everyday world, where so much lies hidden just beneath the surface

Product Description: Booklet published for an exhibit about Westchester County and the railroads at the Hudson River Museum. Contains essays on the meaning of railroads to the American psyche, on the coming of the railroads to Westchester County, and on the commuter's paradise -- Grand Central Station...read more

Portrays the American suburbs from their beginnings in the mid-1800s to the onset of World War II and focuses on their appearance, people's reaction to them and their importance to society

Looks at the ways Americans have altered the landscape from the arrival of early Spanish settlers to the beginning of the country's rapid urbanization