Holy Land, D.J. Waldie
Holy Land, D.J. Waldie
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Holy Land
A Suburban Memoir

Author: D.J. Waldie

Narrator: Rich Miller

Unabridged: 4 hr 22 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 08/03/2021

Synopsis

Since its original publication in 1996, Holy Land has become an American classic. In "quick, translucent prose" (Michiko Kakutani, New York Times) that is at once lyrical and unsentimental, D. J. Waldie recounts growing up in Lakewood, California, a prototypical post-World War II suburb. Laid out in 316 sections as carefully measured as a grid of tract houses, Holy Land is by turns touching, eerie, funny, and encyclopedic in its handling of what was gained and lost when thousands of blue-collar families were thrown together in the suburbs of the 1950s. An intensely realized and wholly original memoir about the way in which a place can shape a life, Holy Land is ultimately about the resonance of choices—how wide a street should be, what to name a park—and the hopes that are realized in the habits of everyday life.

About D.J. Waldie

D. J. Waldie is the author of Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir, which received the California Book Award for nonfiction in 1996, Where We Are Now: Notes from Los Angeles, and coauthor of Real City: Downtown Los Angles Inside/Out. He is a regular contributor to Los Angeles Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly, and others.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Vince

Like Waldie, I grew up in the 1950s in a "development" that months before we moved in was farmland - "truck farms" was what they used to call them - only it was on the south shore of Long Island instead of outside of Los Angeles. All the houses were exactly the same. There were kids everywhere - no......more

Goodreads review by Swati

a loving defense of suburbia. it's written in strange short chapters that go from light to dark to easy to complex fast. it's hard on the stomach that way, but the very last paragraph makes it all worthwhile, and reading that chapter is like the moment you make out a magic eye picture (anyone else r......more

Goodreads review by Eric

This is a cool little book. I like books that I can mow through quickly and finish in a night. Didn't quite finish this one, but it will take only 30 mins. to do so. I wish it had more pictures and that the pictures had captions. It is about my birthplace, Lakewood, CA. I didn't know that Lakewood w......more

Goodreads review by John

A very interesting book on the creation of Lakewood, CA, which became a model of suburban development in the latter half of the 20th century. I felt the tone of the book was very depressing, which was something I was not expecting. The author appeared to portray suburban living as being primarily fa......more

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