The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community [Paperback]

Ray Oldenburg (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 18, 1999

The Great Good Place argues that "third places" - where people can gather, put aside the concerns of work and home, and hang out simply for the pleasures of good company and lively conversation - are the heart of a community's social vitality and the grassroots of democracy.

Editorial Reviews

Review

The Great Good Place has put into words and focus what I've been doing all my life, from the barbershop I remember as a child to the bookstore I now own. My goal at Horizon Books is to provide that third place in which people can "hang out." Ray Oldenburg has defined those good places while still recognizing the magical chemistry they require. The Great Good Place is a book to read, to recommend, and to quote. -- Victor W. Herman, owner of Horizon Books, with locations in Traverse City, Petoskey, and Cadillac, Michigan

A book that should be read by everyone in North America over the age of 16 -- The World of Beer

A day doesn't go by that I don't refer to Ray Oldenburg's The Great Good Place. At a time when all great, good independent bookstores everywhere are under siege, we're fortunate that Mr. Oldenburg has articulated our message so clearly. -- Mitchell Kaplan, owner of Books & Books, Miami, Florida

Examines gathering places and reminds us how important they are. People need the 'third place' to nourish sociability. -- Parade

Oldenburg believes that the powerful need in humans to associate with one another will inevitably lead to the revival of places where, as the theme song to the TV show Cheers so aptly put it, 'everyone knows your name.' We'll drink to that. -- Booklist

Ray Oldenburg is inspirational. He is the first to recognize and articulate the importance of the greeting place (third place) for the well-being of the individual and society at large. -- Ron Sher, President, Terranomics Development and founder of Third Place Books, Seattle, Wash.

The great value of this book is that Mr. Oldenburg has given us an insightful and extremely useful new lens through which to look at a familiar problem. -- New York Times Book Review

This wonderful and utterly important book verifies our need for fun through conversation in "great good places." Oldenburg writes passionately of our country's current and urgent problems resulting from our ever-increasing social isolation and provides us with a very simple solution. America must read and react to this rational common-sense solution to salving our stressed lives. And our government needs to promote, permit, and zone responsible neighborhood hospitality, recognizing the value of "a vital informal life." -- Lynne Breaux, owner, Tunnicliff's Tavern, Washington, D.C.

Well-written, informative, and often entertaining. -- Newark Star-Ledger

About the Author

Ray Oldenburg lives in Pensacola, FL.

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Marlowe & Company; 3rd edition (August 18, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1569246815
• ISBN-13: 978-1569246818
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #21,535 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

71 of 77 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant analysis of a serious contemporary problem, November 8, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community (Paperback)

Ray Oldenburg's The Great Good Place, just issued in this paperback version, is a classic in the sociological literature on the social and cultural geography of American Culture. Taking it's place alongside The Road to Nowhere, much of Christopher Lasch's work and the writings of other distinguished students of the decline of place in America, Oldenburg's work is in many ways better than these precursors because he shows how and why we were on the way to creating a placeless culture even before the computer revolution exacerbated the tend. The wholesale and largely uncritical acceptance of the automobile, place-hostile zoning ordinances, and puritanical meddling have conspired to produce a culture which is rapidly extinguishing haunts and hangouts--the sort of real places of pure sociability which contribute so much to the quality of life and which Oldenburg sees missing in the narrow, money-grubbing, time-driven culture of late century Americans. His analysis of the English Pub, the German Beer Garden, the Viennese coffee house, and other authenic places brings a much needed antidote to the depressing sameness that is characteristic of the increasingly McDonalized society in which we live. Not giving in to pessimism and despair himself, Oldenburg offers wise and witty prescriptions for how we can turn this around and once again produce a "Great Good Place." His thesis is that we have produced this environment--we can produce a better one. This is social science at its best, and with this new paperback edition just published, it should be accessible to more readers than ever.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Think, eat, drink, act, buy local...., February 6, 2006

By 

Good reader (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community (Paperback)

Drawn by the concept of a "third place" as described by this book and referenced elsewhere, I thought I'd read to find out what this was about. In the end, this was a fascinating and thought provoking book. Mr. Oldenburg posits that much of our societal ills today are resultant from a lack of free association. That is, the places where people congregate / hang-out are disappearing because of urbanization, industrialization, etc. One example, the German beer garden (and its descendant in the US with early German immigrants) as a family affair - as, economically, there didn't seem to be any reason for such an institution in an "American" community, this venue slowly disappeared or devolved into the bars we know today - focused on serving alcohol to the subservient and willing. In fact, Oldenburg points out, the beer served in the beer garden was weaker than what we know today because the point was not the beer - the point was the association and conversation within the community, among families.

As we move towards a "private property society" and focus on "property rights" as we seem to understand them, the ability to be social, without prior planning, is slowly eroding. Simultaneously, the places to "hang out" are disappearing as a consumer driven market seems desirous of generating the most profit for the fewest people (corporations). Because of a desire for inexpensive goods, a local business, owned and operated by nearby residents, is next to impossible - especially in the face of the mass market competition from large corporations.

I think Oldenburg hits the nail squarely on the head. As I drive around (in a car-based economy), it's increasingly difficult to find a place to "hang out" and/or become a regular. (1) Restaurants are driven towards specific time limit for customers in hopes of turning a larger profit by serving more customers; (2) American bars are not conducive because service deteriorates if you choose not to imbibe and those that also serve food follow (1); and (3) the notion of coffee shops not driven by 1 or 2 are few and far between. Even assuming that there are such places of the "third place" variety, it more often than not requires a car to get there (not to mention paying to simply park near a place).

Anyone interested in property rights, humans as a social animal, and the notion of a "community," should read this book.

37 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, if unfocused, October 26, 2000

By 

T E Whalen - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community (Paperback)

Oldenburg's scholarship here is a little fuzzy -- while I found myself agreeing with many of his points, much of his evidence seemed anecdotal. His cross-cultural comparisons were interesting: the French cafe and the Austrian coffeehouse are institutions that seem, well, very foreign to Americans.

There are no substantive mentions of hair salons or bookstores in this work. I'm not sure how they slipped into the title.

On the whole, this work raises interesting questions about the decline of public life and public space in American culture. Oldenburg throws a number of darts at the suburbs and poor urban planning, but seems to spend more time lamenting the lost innocence of small-town America than thinking about the future and how things could be turned around. There's a lot of thought-provoking material here, and I think this work represents a good jumping-off point for further consideration and research.