by Brent Hull ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 2014
A pleasing, educational look at traditional home construction.
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Hull (Traditional American Rooms, 2003) celebrates the lost art of thoughtful home construction.
We don’t build houses like we used to. The craftsmanship central to generations of construction is largely absent in modern homebuilding, which has become more concerned with creating a mass-produced product at a predetermined price. Hull takes readers through the evolution of our views on home construction: what was once valued, what is valued now, and what things most people don’t ever think about. The book includes explanations of the shifting architectural trends in residences, from Enlightenment-era builders finding inspiration in antiquity to European-style houses in America to Levittown and the rise of production building. He also explains the processes of home design, from fire-safety concerns and framing to theories of ornamentation. He concludes with an “Illustrations and Applications” chapter to guide those who wish to implement what they’ve learned. Yet this book won’t actually tell readers how to build a house; rather, it looks at the way homebuilding was approached (aesthetically, philosophically, commercially) in Europe and America in the last few centuries and how we have arrived at our current homebuilding culture. His argument isn’t based on bleary-eyed nostalgia: it appears that houses really were objectively better in earlier eras, and if people demand as much, they can be better again. This seems like a book for the times: as people become ever more interested in “artisanal” everything, Hull reminds us that the ultimate embodiment of craftsmanship and rustic know-how is a well-built house. A construction veteran of the world of historic restoration, Hull is also a gifted writer of (better than) workmanlike prose. His narrative voice is clean and accessible; a more inspired, lyrical language sometimes arises when he broaches a topic (such as the Derby Summerhouse) that truly excites him. Part call to action, part exploration of technique, the result is a persuasive and enjoyable reminder that our homes are reflections of ourselves. As Hull says, “We need to wonder if building cheap homes doesn’t cause us to become a cheap culture.”
A pleasing, educational look at traditional home construction.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1612541570
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Brown Books Publishing Group
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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developed by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno
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by Charlayne Hunter-Gault ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1992
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
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