The Lawn: A History of an American Obsession

Reading this history of lawns sent me back to Currier and Ives, where I found that, indeed, there was little grass and lots of chickens around the family homestead. This is a likeable rediscovery of how our need to conform to standardized appearances has shaped our markets and our vision of democracy.

It's an okay history, but the author doesn't like lawns and the bias shows. That's a shame.

Thoroughly researched with excellent sources.

Anyone interested in how lawns came to be the "norm" and a standard signifier of upward mobility in America will find this book fascinating. For those who would like to encourage a different urban form (less lawns, houses closer to the street, new urbanism or smart growth) the book offers some hope by its demonstration of how something so "natural" was constructed over the last 80-100 years. The roles of technology, science, and gender politics, as well as class issues and environmental concerns are covered in a way that makes the story more entertaining and underscores the numerous fronts through which the lawn aesthetic was reinforced. I found this to be a great contribution to our understanding of how one element of the bigger picture contributes to larger trends affecting human settlement patterns, the ways we interact with each other and experience community, and even our public health. Now I need to read the history "air conditioning in america" to understand the role of that element....most cultural and social histories certainly cite issues like lawns and air conditioning as part of the dynamics, but don't have the time or space to examine the issue in depth-- its great that Jenkins does this, even if it was a dissertation (and heck, that's one of the things dissertations are actually useful for...).

This book describes the history of how lawns were first introduced to American, became popular, and then became a necessity. Jenkins traces the early history of lawns as importations of the English country garden concept, as found in Jefferson's gardens in Monticello. She also explains the influences that garden clubs, the golf industry, and the USDA had on the popularization of lawns. The book is not just about lawns, however. It also provides a very interesting analysis of how advertising was used to create demand for completely unnecessary products, and how those products, such as lawn mowers and weed whackers, later came to be thought of as indispensable. This book will be of interest to historians of landscape architecture as well as to researchers of material culture.