The Development of American Housing - Slate.com Book Excerpts from Last Harvest

Over the last few days the online magazine, Slate.com, has been running a great series of excerpts from the new book The Last Harvest: How a Cornfield Became New Daleville by Witold Rybczynski.



The book, and the excerpts chosen by Slate, explain how we have come to the state of American housing as it exists today. The three excerpts are titled:

1. Why Do We Live In Houses, Anyway - A Brief History of the Home
   
2. The Ranch House Anomaly - How Americans Fell In and Out of Love With Them
3. How a Cornfield Became New Daleville - Building a Town from Scratch

This last excerpt is actually a slideshow. All three pieces are informative and fascinating, and tell the story of American housing and its evolution into the mess it is today, and the negative impact that has on the quality of American life (my editorial condemnation, not Slate's or necessarily the book's). I highly recommend the excerpts, and I'm curious to read the whole book.

Hopefully the new interest in better family homes, green and often modern, as well as better community planning, will grow into something larger and help turn things around.

See the link to the Amazon listing for Last Harvest in my sidebar.

Image credit - Amazon.com listing