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The Lawn: A History of an American Obsession
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The Lawn: A History of an American Obsession
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by Virginia Scott Jenkins
Sales Rank : 589863
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Paperback: 246 pages
Publisher: Smithsonian April 17, 1994
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1560984066
ISBN-13: 978-1560984061
Product Dimensions:
8.9 x 6.4 x 0.7 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
From Publishers Weekly
In the 18th-century English landscape, a folly was an extravagant building or ruin. In the 20th-century American landscape, the folly had to be the lawn. Jenkins's account gets off to a slightly slow start as she follows the lawn from its earliest beginnings as a simplified version of English romantic parks in the 19th century to the smooth fairway aesthetic fostered by the U.S. Golf Association (USGA) in the early 20th. But from then on, The Lawn is a quirky, thoroughly enjoyable look at man vs. nature, man vs. woman, and man vs. the Joneses. Despite the millions spent by both the USDA (U.S. Department of Agriculture) and USGA to develop hardy disease- and pest-resistant turf for any climate, it did not obviate the need for tons of toxic herbicides and pesticides, gallons of water (even in the arid Southwest) and, as a 1952 article in Life said, the basics--"bamboo rake, grass shears, hand sprayer . . . wave sprinkler, a hoe, wheelbarrow, roller, iron rake, lawn mower and spade, an aerator, a weed knife." It was an arsenal, and Jenkins makes a convincing argument that the military metaphors used by advertisers and lawn-care experts alike were part of a male viewpoint that saw nature as something to be "controlled and mastered." It wasn't long before that controlled lawn, once a sign of affluence, became the strictly enforced norm of good citizenship and general moral rectitude. This summer could be much more fun if readers ignore their own lawns and stick to Jenkins's.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The New Yorker, July, 1999
Virginia Scott Jenkins shows that this uniquely American landscape form is not a native one: indigenous New World grasses were munched into extinction by the colonists' Old World livestock, and the very concept of the lawn was borrowed from the romantic English parks of Capability Brown and from the French tapis vert. But gradual suburbanization and the shaming tactics of appearance-minded neighbors led America to become completely besotted with grass---and lawn care
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