The Geography of Nowhere
The Rise and Decline of America's Man-made Landscape

Happiness is a place. Someone said that, I don’t now who. Perhaps a lot of people said it. I have. I went looking for it. I found happiness in a place. The Geography of Nowhere by James Howard Kunstler probably had more of an effect on me than any book I've ever read. This effect can be measured by m......more

In describing a certain way of viewing the landscape, Kunstler makes the observation that a Jacksonian student of landscape can study a fast food place (in his example a place called the Red Barn that looks like a red barn) and "never arrive at the conclusion that the Red Barn is an ignoble piece of......more

There is nothing like a little James Howard Kunstler to make you feel like a complete asshole and Capitalist whore. His newest prophesy is that the American suburb is dead, but this book only predicts that with its strangely-plausible sounding doomsday warnings and vehement attacks against anyone so......more

"The Geography of Nowhere" tends towards the polemic, but through most of the book I found myself agreeing with Kunstler's ideas. His basic premise is that the fundamental American bias towards private property rights has created a culture weak in community- and this bias has combined with an over-r......more

In this book, Kunstler covers the history and development of town planning and suburbification with a definite chip on his shoulder. Starting with colonial times, he examines how we have used (and misused) land for individual, rather than group purposes. The great expanse of America was ours for the......more