During a long and distinguished career, John Brinckerhoff Jackson (1909-1996) brought about a new understanding and appreciation of the American landscape. Hailed in 1995 by New York Times architectural critic Herbert Muschamp as 'America’s greatest living writer on the forces that have shaped the land this nation occupies,' Jackson founded Landscape Magazine in 1951, taught at Harvard University and the University of California at Berkeley, and wrote nearly 200 essays and reviews. This appealing anthology of his most important writings on the American landscape, illustrated with his own sketches and photographs, brings together Jackson’s most famous essays, significant but less well known writings, and articles that were originally published unsigned or under various pseudonyms. Jackson also completed a new essay for this volume, 'Places for Fun and Games,' a few months before his death. Focusing not on nature but on landscape - land shaped by human presence - Jackson insists in his writings that the workaday world gives form to the essential American landscape. In the everyday places of the countryside and city, he discerns texts capable of revealing important truths about society and culture, present and past. For this collection Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz provides an introduction that discusses the larger body of Jackson’s writing and locates each of the selected essays within his oeuvre. She also includes a complete bibliography of Jackson’s writings.

A collection of seventeen essays examining the field of American cultural landscapes past and present. The role of J. B. Jackson and his influence on the field is a explored in many of them.

A pioneer in landscape studies takes us on a tour of landscapes past and present to show how our surroundings reflect our culture. "No one who cares deeply about landscape issues can overlook the scores of brilliant insights and challenges to the mind, eye and conscience contained in Discovering the Vernacular Landscape. It is a book to be deeply cherished and to be read and pondered many times."--Wilbur Zelinsky, Landscape "While it is fashionable to speak of man as alienated from his environment, Mr. Jackson shows us all the ties that bind us to it, consciously or unconsciously. He teaches us to speak intelligently--rather than polemically or wistfully--of the sense of place."--Anatole Broyard, New York Times "This book is a vital and seminal text: do beg, borrow or buy it."--Robert Holden, Landscape Design (London) "Incisive and overpoweringly influential. It will probably tell you something about how you live that you've never thought about."--Thomas Hine, The Philadelphia Inquirer "No one can come close to Jackson in his unique combination of historical scholarship and field experience, in his deep knowledge of European high culture as well as of American trailer parks, in his archivist's nose for the unusual fact and his philosopher's mind for the trenchant, surprising question."--Yi-Fu Tuan

J.B. Jackson, a pioneer in the field of landscape studies, here takes us on a tour of American landscapes past and present, showing how our surroundings reflect important changes in our culture. Because we live in urban and industrial environments that are constantly evolving, says Jackson, time and movement are increasingly important to us and place and permanence are less so. We no longer gain a feeling of community from where we live or where we assemble but from common work hours, habits, and customs. Jackson examines the new vernacular landscape of trailers, parking lots, trucks, loading docks, and suburban garages, which all reflect this emphasis on mobility and transience; he redefines roads as scenes of work and leisure and social intercourse--as places, rather than as means of getting to places; he argues that public parks are now primarily for children, older people, and nature lovers, while more mobile or gregarious people seek recreation in shopping malls, in the street, and in sports arenas; he traces the development of dwellings in New Mexico from prehistoric Pueblo villages to mobile homes; and he criticizes the tendency of some environmentalists to venerate nature instead of interacting with it and learning to share it with others in temporary ways. Written with his customary lucidity and elegance, this book reveals Jackson's passion for vernacular culture, his insights into a style of life that blurs the boundaries between work and leisure, between middle and working classes, and between public and private spaces.

Jackson discussed the evolution of the development, use, and perception of landscape--the space around us in the most general sense. The title chapter examines the proliferation of historic parks and monuments and argues that American culture demands a three-step formulation of history.

"J. B. (John Brinckerhoff) Jackson founded, edited, and published Landscape from 1951–1969, v. 1-32, no. 2; spring 1951-1994] a magazine that changed the way everyone—including writers and scholars, planners and designers, artists and the general public—came to understand and interpret the everyday places that surround us and influence us in fundamental ways. Then, through his distinguished teaching career at Harvard University and the University of California, Berkeley, and through his expansive array of seminal essays and influential books, Jackson further pioneered the advancement of "landscape studies," whose connections today extend to more than a dozen academic, artistic, and professional fields. Drawn to Landscape is the first book to present fully the many aspects of Jackson's career. Including original essays by those who not only knew Jackson well, but also have carried his torch to new heights in their own work, the book sheds valuable light on Jackson's life, oeuvre, influences, and many legacies. Also included are 126 color illustrations and twenty-eight black-and-white illustrations, among them 117 of Jackson's original drawings, watercolors, and teaching slides. J. B. Jackson redefined landscape not as scenery but as the historical record of human interactions with the environment, whether urban, rural, suburban, social, or wild. He taught us to pay attention to the often overlooked but defining features of our everyday world, whose varied landscapes are created by ordinary people going about their day-to-day lives. And he guided us, from the first issue of Landscape to his last lecture and publication, to look at the landscape like one reads a book. As he proclaimed, "We have but to learn how to read it." This book helps show us the way."--