Look across the country on any summer Saturday and what do you see? From coast to coast you see millions of men mowing. There also may be some women tending to the turf these days, but the obsession with the lawn is truly a male phenomenon. How green is it? How thick is it? How well-mown and weed-free is it? These are the questions that try men's souls. In A Man's Turf: The Perfect Lawn, author Warren Schultz delves into history, psychology, and botany to explain the irresistible appeal of the riding mower and freshly cut grass. But as a leading expert on lawn and garden care, he also offers a wealth of practical, hands-on information for growing, mowing, weeding, and watering a better lawn. Schultz explores how the lawn grew up in America and visits some of the great historical lawns. He examines the machines involved--reel and rotary lawn mowers, weed whackers and water sprinklers--that shape the lawn, and gets down on his knees to look at some amazing grass, highlighting the pros and cons of the many new varieties. Schultz interviews the great turf gurus of golf courses and ballparks and reveals their insiders' tips on lawn care. A Man's Turf also provides a unique guide to lawn-related products, events, and pilgrimages--from a bicycle-powered mower to the finish line of the lawn mower races to a mower museum. In A Man's Turf: The Perfect Lawn, garden expert Warren Schultz examines the pleasures and pitfalls that await the lawn-obsessed everywhere. He explains how to grow, mow, weed, and water a thicker, greener, healthier lawn, offering insight and a wealth of practical information, along with more than 200 full-color photographs.

“Ted Steinberg proves once again that he is a master storyteller as well as our foremost environmental historian.”—Mike Davis The rise of the perfect lawn represents one of the most profound transformations in the history of the American landscape. American Green, Ted Steinberg's witty exposé of this bizarre phenomenon, traces the history of the lawn from its explosion in the postwar suburban community of Levittown to the present love affair with turf colorants, leaf blowers, and riding mowers.

Book description to come.

For some people, their lawn is a source of pride, and for others, caring for their lawn is a chore. Yet for an increasing number of people, turf care is a cause of ecological anxiety. In Lawn People, author Paul Robbins, asks, "How did the needs of the grass come to be my own?" In his goal to get a clearer picture of why people and grasses do what they do, Robbins interviews homeowners about their lawns, and uses national surveys, analysis from aerial photographs, and economic data to determine what people really feel about-and how they treat-their lawns. Lawn People places the lawn in its ecological, economic, and social context. Robbins considers the attention we pay our turfgrass-the chemicals we use to grow lawns, the hazards of turf care to our urban ecology, and its potential impact on water quality and household health. He also shows how the ecology of cities creates certain kinds of citizens, deftly contrasting man's control of the lawn with the lawn's control of man. Lawn People provides an intriguing examination of nature's influence on landscape management and on the ecosystem.

Current political, social, scientific, education, and literary news written about by many famous authors and reform movements.

"Is Peter Klein Australia's answer to Dick Francis? As with Francis, Klein knows the territory intimately with his autobiography of racing life, A Strapper's Tale, selling out within months. He turns out to be a dab hand at crime fiction, too. Klein is a natural writer. This is a cracking yarn, written in an action-packed, unpretentious style, underscored vividly by the author's detailed knowledge of the racing world." THE AGE Pick of the Week John Punter, professional gambler and amateur private investigator, has seen his fair share of crime and shady dealings, both on the race track and off it. So when the daughter of a bookmaker friend is abducted, following hot on the heels of a gruesome murder after an abduction-gone-wrong, Punter's offer of help is gladly accepted. But then, just when everything seems to be going right, a local trainer hits a run of unusual bad luck and a young jockey dies under suspicious circumstances. With the help of a journalist friend, Kate, Punter begins to put the pieces together, and finds himself drawn into a tangled web of underworld crimes that are much more sinister than he had anticipated...

Lawns now blanket thirty million acres of the United States, but until the late nineteenth century few Americans had any desire for a front lawn, much less access to seeds for growing one. In her comprehensive history of this uniquely American obsession, Virginia Scott Jenkins traces the origin of the front lawn aesthetic, the development of the lawn-care industry, its environmental impact, and modern as well as historic alternatives to lawn mania.