Outside Lies Magic: Regaining History and Awareness in Everyday Places [Paperback]

John R. Stilgoe (Author), John Stilgoe (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 1999

Outside Lies Magic is a book about the acute observation of ordinary things, about becoming aware in everyday places, about seeing in utterly new ways, about enriching your life unexpectedly.
For more than 20 years, John R. Stilgoe has developed and practiced the art of exploring the everyday world around us, where so much lies hidden just beneath the surface, offering uncommon knowledge if we but know what to look for. In this remarkable book, Stilgoe inspires us to become explorers on our own–on foot or on bicycle–and by so doing to reap the benefits of escaping, even temporarily, the traps of our programmed lives.

"Exploration encourages creativity, serendipity, invention," he writes. And while sharing his insights on how to explore, Stilgoe provides a fascinating pocket history of the American landscape, as striking in its originality as it is revealing. Stilgoe dissects our visual surroundings; his observations will transform the way you see everything. Through his eyes, an abandoned railroad line is redolent of history and future promise; front lawns recall our agrarian past; vacant lots hold cathedrals of potential.

From the electrical grid overhead to fences, malls, and main streets, Stilgoe offers a fresh understanding of the links and fractures in our society. After reading Outside Lies Magic, your world will never look the same again.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

What lies along the highway, just out of sight? How about behind that building? Or under the street? Most of us muse idly about such things as we take our walks or drive our cars, but only a few go further and explore the secret histories of the places where we live. Landscape historian John R. Stilgoe is one of these intrepid explorers; for years he has taught Harvard students to open their senses to the created environment we share, to gently dissect our neighborhoods and public spaces for the knowledge hidden in plain sight. In Outside Lies Magic, he lets us all in on these wonderful secrets.

Guiding us on tracks laid by utility and railroad companies, showing us the hidden territory of postal systems, Stilgoe reminds us that important frontiers lie invisible in our backyards and side streets, waiting for our attention. Though more interested in showing us how to see than telling us what there is to see, his descriptions of power-line right-of-ways, alley-side entrances, and hobo jungles provide compelling incentive for the reader to take his advice to heart and start looking around and asking questions of the community. If you think it's important to "think locally," Outside Lies Magic is an outstanding training manual. --Rob Lightner --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

In Common Landscape of America, 1580-1845, Stilgoe brilliantly traced the history and the meaning of man's imprint on the American environment. His new book, as informal and chatty as Common Landscape was scholarly, looks at the physical state of America today and encourages his readers to become "Explorers": unhurried, clear-eyed observers of the world they rush through. The book is wildly unevenAthe section on motels, for instance, does little more than belabor the obviousAand the repeated refrain to Open Your Eyes and Look Around becomes hectoring, but when Stilgoe lets his imagination run free, the results can become breathtaking. The chapter on interstate highways touches on such things as what's written on the backs of signs, the dirt tracks that parallel expressways, roadkill and what happens to it and what seemingly random patches of wild flowers may really signify. Perhaps the best chapter deals with fences and other ways people draw lines across the landscape to mark boundaries or create the illusion of privacy. Stilgoe calls this a "straightforward guidebook to exploring" whose purpose borders on the evangelical, but it's the sort of book that makes the reader want to buttonhole anyone handy and say, "Listen to this."
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Walker & Company (April 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802775632
• ISBN-13: 978-0802775634
• Product Dimensions: 0.5 x 4.7 x 8.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #42,381 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #3 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Sociology > Social Theory

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

45 of 47 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Better insights than prescription for action October 13, 1998

By Ted Coltman ([e-mail])

Format:Hardcover

This book should please anyone who enjoys spending time walking, in-line skating, or bicycling around the margins of the landscape that Americans have crafted (and often later abandoned or forgotten) during the last few centuries. Stilgoe seems to believe that such casual observation is a far rarer pastime than I suspect it is (and perhaps that it should be less a mere pastime than a virtuous calling).

That doubtless accounts for the excess of zeal that I think has crept into his text. Stilgoe is unquestionably right, however, that further inquiry into the little puzzles encountered in these marginal landscapes will reward anyone with a mildly inquisitive bent. Stilgoe himself rewards the reader with insights into the interplay of diverse forces that can be read in the patina of an inhabited landscape (e.g., the less-than-obvious relationship between a townscape of tree-lined streets and an economic base sufficient to support municipal fire-suppression services).

I doubt that Stilgoe was trying to prescribe a program of action to "rescue" or "restore" the landscape, or in fact to do anything but to "regain awareness," as the subtitle puts it.

Should this book be the start for a reader interested in such things? The story that Stilgoe tells about the experience of close observation should make it an accessible beginning. But some readers might wish to begin with one of the other writers and scholars closely associated with observation of the American landscape, e.g....:

Grady Clay's "Close-Up, How to Read the American City" (1980), "Right Before Your Eyes: Penetrating the Urban Environment " (1987), and "Real Places: An Unconventional Guide to America's Generic Landscape" (1994)

John Brinckerhoff Jackson's "Discovering the Vernacular Landscape" (1986), "A Sense of Place, a Sense of Time" (1994), and "Landscape in Sight: Looking at America" (1997)

James Howard Kunstler's "The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape" (1994) and "Home from Nowhere: Remaking Our Everyday World for the Twenty-First Century" (1996) Read more ›

27 of 30 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Fragmenties? July 17, 2000

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

A thought-provoking introduction to reading the built environment by close observation. However, Stilgoe's attitude is a bit elitist. The "explorer" in his parlance is vastly superior to us ordinary humans. I don't think as few people as he imagines pay attention to the edges and fringes of highways, strip malls and industrial parks.

The thing that really threw me? He twice mentions "Fragmenties", an invasive introduced plant. Unless fragmenties is a really localized phenomenon - localized to where Stilgoe bicycles only, I think he's referring to Phragmites a native grass gone invasive at least partly due to reduced salinity in salt marshes cut off from the twice daily tidal flooding. So, take what he says with a grain of salt and check other references.

If you want inspiration to go out there and look around in the urban clutter to see what's really there, try One Square Mile on the Atlantic Coast: An Artist's Journal of the New Jersey Shore by John R. Quinn.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Curt Raffi May 2, 2000

By Southeastern Mass Customer

Format:Hardcover

John Stilgoe once again captures the imagination of the reader and encourages us to truly "see", not just "inhabit" the world that lies all around us.

As in his other works, he teaches us that history and archaeology are not just a part of musty museums, but of the every day built environment. There is a history behind everything that we come across in our daily lives and he wants us to take a second as a child might and think about the environment in which we live.

Having had the opportunity to take classes he taught at Harvard, this book enabled me to reenter his world of delicate insight and deep knowledge about what many in our society simply overlook or have forgotten.

If you like pop culture, history, walking down forgotten railroad beds or simply enjoy driving down unknown roads, Stilgoe will capture you.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Guide to interacting with the visual environment July 31, 1998

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

Though you may get more detailed info on some of the specific subjects covered in this book, the point really is that if you get out on foot or bicycle you can begin to relearn visual acuity. It is not the end all be all guide to the visual landscape but rather a call to arms. Most people wonder at the keen perception demonstrated by observers in previous centuries, Stilgoe spells out why we have lost this and how we may regain it. His chapters are inticements and not academic. For proof of Stilgoe's total mastery of landscape history read any of his previous works. I can't think of a similar book on the market today that addresses the urban landcsape, the everyday and does not romanticize the wilderness "preserves" of the park service. Excellent. Don't read it unless you plan to get off your butt.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Its a Start... November 30, 1999

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

Good introduction book on observing the world around us. It seems like there should be so much more written on this topic.

I recommend this book although I admit also that the writer's style can get to you sometimes (however, I wouldn't go so far as to say the author is overly pretentious).

Anyway, I also recommend "The Meadowlands" if you are interested in this type of book.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Quick, wonderful read - filled with wonder! October 18, 2003

By Ellis Godard

Format:Paperback

A fantastic little book that will remind you of wonder, make you wonder at the world around you, and help you stop ignoring the variety and patterns to which we've become numb.

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars New Age History July 8, 1998

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

I had heard Stilgoe on a recent NPR show, and was looking forward to reading his observations about our changing built environment. While there is a smattering of interesting information (i.e., the fact that AC and DC currents once vied with each other in homes), the majority of it is so much fluffy, new agey, and poorly written observations. For the same price, I recommend a much more complete and fascinating book about observing change, "How Buildings Learn" by Stewart Brand. It's spectacular.