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Amazon.com
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 the Hardcover edition.

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 the Hardcover edition.

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First Sentence:
GET OUT NOW. Not just outside, but beyond the trap of the programmed electronic age so gently closing around so many people at the end of our century. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
explorer walking, few motorists, explorer discovers, railroad corridor, ordinary landscape Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
United States, Express Mail, New England, New York City New!
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