Customer Reviews

The American Porch: An Informal History of an Informal Place

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Michael Dolan is an excellent and engaging writer who guides the reader not only on a fascinating tour of the American porch, but also traces its family history back to the Carribean, Italy, Greece, India, and Africa. He provides a wonderful history review of many of the events and people who have the shaped United States while providing a narrative on its politics, music, and movies. This book begins with Colonial days continues into commune days and lastly touches upon current issues such as "Smart Growth" initiatives. I recommend that anyone who wants to learn more about the American porch, U.S. history or ways to meet the neighbors put this book at the top of their, "To Read" list.

Mr. Dolan has captured my attention with a most complete writing of a very favorite place: a porch. I found its history from early Greek to present day country home porches to be most interesting and informative. The photographs and descriptions of porches brings nostalgia. The book can best be read while sitting on a porch swing, sipping hot cocoa when the weather is cool or a glass of iced tea when its warm...

This book is much more than architecture. I especially liked the connection of the American Porch to history, politics, movies, and the crafts movement in this country. Others may find the effect that the porch had on slavery, Italian aristocracy, tourism, and air conditioning more interesting. It is just a great read.

Michael Dolan makes fascinating what is essentially just a bit of board and nail by unusual side trips and excursions. History, construction and architecture weaved together with sociology and anecdote make for a wonderful read. Dolan's research is meticulous and a reader feels this was done out of a profound love of the subject and a need to share his enthusiasm with somebody. If you love to sit on your porch -- or hope to have one someday -- you should buy this book.

The American Porch is an excellent book. Very well written and researched. The description, "an informal history of an informal place" describes the book perfectly. Lots of pictures, in color and black and white, help illustrate the variety in porch design going back centuries. If you're a homeowner the book will aid you in clarifying your love/hate relationship with the front of your home. Mr. Dolan obviously did some serious thinking about his front porch before he contracted to have it built. (This portion of the book is priceless, in entertainment and insight, if you've ever hired a contractor!)
There is ample history about the origin of porches. Those interested in the history of structures and architecture will be pleased with the detail provided. I enjoyed the tidbits of info that Dolan includes like the inside scoop on the "porch picture" on the Crosby, Stills and Nash album cover. (Would they really be the same if they had been called Nash Stills and Crosby?) He covers the history of "decks" and why he hates them from the poison laced timbers to the private surburban backyards the deck created. You'll learn something about yourself reading the American Porch.

I could not get through this book on my favorite subject. The incoherent ramblings of this book caused me to finally put it down. I tried to skip ahead about half way through and could still find nothing interesting. This author has no self control and thinks that we should be interested in his constant asides that are not at all compelling. I love porches. I have one I wrote essays about them and have done my own extensive research. I was very excited to find that someone had written a book dealing with the history of my favorite architectural idiom and I was very disappointed by this book.
The one bit of insight I got from this book is that maybe the dominance of
European history and cultural on American society is not a grand conspiracy to oppress marginalized people. It is just a phenomenon caused by lazy writers who would rather travel to Italy than Africa. Dolan mentions that many notable scholars believe that the origins of the porch are found in African dwellings. He describes this for a little while with most of his information coming from a single interview. He then states that Italy also has places that kind of look like porches and then describes for two chapters his trip to italy to look at porticos. The coverage of the African roots of the porch was at best cursory and done in way that I felt was kind of gross in its part in continuing to marginalize forgotten history. This book is not worth the effort it takes to try to get through it.

I was moved by the book so much that I built a porch on my house too!

Liberal slant and vulgar language? Well, I guess some people would see even topless statutes of Justice holding her scales in the cool, august halls of federal buildings as vulgar.

Michael's book is wonderful, and pretty much partisan-free. It's a very personal view he takes, but his wit and degree of research is what makes this book worth reading. I now have a much better understanding of porches and their history, and thanks to a previous reviewer of this book, I also understand why porches went away in the modern age, and why their return seems threatening to those who want to keep us divided and scared.

I stumbled across this delightful and improbable book recently and loved it. It's scholarly, it's profane, it's a personal walkabout that everyone(who lives in a pre-1950 house or New Urbanist enclave) can enjoy without leaving home.

Then I read your reviews and was suprised to see that every guest reviewer gave The American Porch 5 stars while two (philistines) gave 1 star.

May I be the first Amazon reviewer to review other reviews? (Probably not.) The 1-star reviewers are full of stuffing and probably could not tell a front porch from a port cochere, a Porsche 914, or Port-de-Paix, Haiti.

That said, I am enamored by Mr. Dolan's style (Jimmy Breslin meets and perhaps mates with Wytold Rybcinski). Yes he peregrinates but the side journeys are thoroughly enjoyable -- a creek with many fingers, each worth exploring, preferably by a canoe moving with the tides.

I just wrote that sentence to prove that Mr. Dolan is a far better writer than I. Has this man written another book?

Mr. Dolan's easy style make this thoughtful and thorough book a pleasure to read. This book is a great bathroom read!