A sweeping historical study, Building Paradise seeks to construct a garden ethic for the design arts. It is an ethic predicated on the idea that, with our recent ecological and biological insights, we can build more intelligently than the status quo of current design practices. The paradisiacal instinct is the motivation behind every artistic impulse. From its theological origins to the present, the idea of paradise—the garden as a place of peace, beauty, and happiness—has acquired numerous meanings. It was a motif expounded in the earliest cultures of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Indus Valley, and it later became a dominant feature of Buddhist, Judeo-Christian, and Islamic practices. It informed Greco-Roman mythologies and the design of a Japanese garden; it was a motivation for the Renaissance humanists, and was complicit in visions of a New Arcadia within the landscapes of the Americas. This book, underscoring how the built and urban environments shapes culture, takes a biophilic approach and draws upon the major advances of the human sciences of the last few decades to argue on behalf of a design ethic centered squarely on human needs and aspirations. Written for students and academics within architecture and all related fields, this book focuses on the efforts to build paradise in a material way.

An examination of the history of food distribution in the United States explores the roles that gender, business, class, and the state played in the evolution of American grocery stores.

This innovative and absorbing book surveys a little known chapter in the story of American urbanism—the history of communities built and owned by single companies seeking to bring their workers' homes and place of employment together on a single site. By 1930 more than two million people lived in such towns, dotted across an industrial frontier which stretched from Lowell, Massachusetts, through Torrance, California to Norris, Tennessee. Margaret Crawford focuses on the transformation of company town construction from the vernacular settlements of the late eighteenth century to the professional designs of architects and planners one hundred and fifty years later. Eschewing a static architectural approach which reads politics, history, and economics through the appearance of buildings, Crawford portrays the successive forms of company towns as the product of a dynamic process, shaped by industrial transformation, class struggle, and reformers' efforts to control and direct these forces.

The author of Men Explain Things to Me explores the moments of altruism and generosity that arise in the aftermath of disaster Why is it that in the aftermath of a disaster? whether manmade or natural?people suddenly become altruistic, resourceful, and brave? What makes the newfound communities and purpose many find in the ruins and crises after disaster so joyous? And what does this joy reveal about ordinarily unmet social desires and possibilities? In A Paradise Built in Hell, award-winning author Rebecca Solnit explores these phenomena, looking at major calamities from the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco through the 1917 explosion that tore up Halifax, Nova Scotia, the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, 9/11, and Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. She examines how disaster throws people into a temporary utopia of changed states of mind and social possibilities, as well as looking at the cost of the widespread myths and rarer real cases of social deterioration during crisis. This is a timely and important book from an acclaimed author whose work consistently locates unseen patterns and meanings in broad cultural histories.

Paradise Planned is the definitive history of the development of the garden suburb, a phenomenon that originated in England in the late eighteenth century, was quickly adopted in the United State and northern Europe, and gradually proliferated throughout the world. These bucolic settings offered an ideal lifestyle typically outside the city but accessible by streetcar, train, and automobile. Today, the principles of the garden city movement are once again in play, as retrofitting the suburbs has become a central issue in planning. Strategies are emerging that reflect the goals of garden suburbs in creating metropolitan communities that embrace both the intensity of the city and the tranquility of nature. Paradise Planned is the comprehensive, encyclopedic record of this movement, a vital contribution to architectural and planning history and an essential recourse for guiding the repair of the American townscape.

Designed by Charles and Henry Greene in 1908, The Gamble House ranks high among the great works of architecture worldwide. Commissioned by heirs to the Procter & Gamble fortune, the house embodies not only the noblest aspirations of the Arts & Crafts movement but also the aspirations of Americans who seek to live in greater harmony with the land. It is the paramount collaboration between two of America's most gifted architects and their astute patrons. In the first publication about the house since its restoration in 2004, The Gamble House: Building Paradise in California documents the history, design, craftsmanship, and enduring aesthetic impact of this renowned cultural landmark. It takes a close look at the pull of paradise that was early-twentieth century California, and shows how the house fit into that paradise and helped to define it. New photography by Alexander Vertikoff illuminates a series of scholarly essays based on recently discovered archival material. The essays were written by Gamble House scholars Edward R. Bosley, Anne E. Mallek, Ann Scheid, and Robert Winter.

Thirty years ago, a young Colorado ski racer falls in love with the freedom and sensuality of a remote Costa Rican rainforest. However, unlike most of us who return home from our tropical vacations, she sets out to make this sensation her life, and to help others experience it. With her own hands, and the help of a Costa Rican boyfriend, she builds an ecolodge in the remote rainforest of Costa Rica's Osa Peninsula. During her journey, a tractor trailer rolls over on her, breaking her leg in four places, her house burns to the ground, and she completely runs out of money. These calamities only strengthen her resolve. In the end, she succeeds in building a lodge praised by media ranging from Travel + Leisure to CNN, and in helping people from all over the world experience one of the most biologically diverse places on earth. She also creates the nonprofit Whitehawk Foundation to save the Osa rainforest.