Gods Own Junkyard Re

From Front Jacket: "'God's Own Junkyard' is a muckraking book...In four brilliant and devastating chapters, Peter Blake sets forth the case against the collusion of politics, business, and public indifference which is depradating the American landscape and in five additional chapters masterfully documents in pictures (there are 157 in the volume) the evidence supporting his contention that the townscapes, landscapes, roadscapes, carscapes, and skyscapes of America (and there is nothing left over if these go) are being laid waste by venality, vulgarity, and general, if not systematic, 'uglification.'" ***** Chapters Include: * Preface * God's Own Junkyard * Lords of the Soil * Improvements and Comforts of Social Life * Thine Alabaster Cities * Townscape * Landscape * Roadscape * Carscape * Skyscape * To Determine that the Community Should Be Beautiful * Photographic Sources

This book's fury-driven introductory essay makes many superb points about what we're doing (okay, what we've done - the book was published in 1964) to our landscape, or rather are continuing to allow to be done by soulless "business is business" types in our devil-take-the-hindmost cultural milieu. The 130+ b & w photos are stunning, in the best and worst senses of the word -- and not unmixed with nostalgia, as we note the smallish herds of 50's cars in situ, and realize that many of the "ravaged" sites shown are now viewable as nostalgia sets, compared with what came along in the decades that followed. A great visual treat (if you take your Tums), and a source of some interesting cultural perspectives (e.g., the story of the Seagram Building's lost "prestige tax" court battle). A must for any American cultural history library!