Review by Choice Review
Herzog capitalizes on the pioneering research of John Brinckerhof Jackson in the 1950s and '60s, his principal legatee John Stilgoe of Harvard (Borderland, CH, May'89, and other books), and the whole vernacular architecture movement that has tended to take design "back to the land" and back to the people. It is a mixture of cultural geography and ethnic, architectural, and urban history--a kind of Baedeker's guide for academies. Herzog reflects on the two thousand-mile border between Mexico and the US that stretches between San Diego, California, and Brownsville, Texas. Somehow these termini reflect the character of the life and the environment that lies between them, suspended between economic domination and cultural dissipation. Herzog (urban planning, School of Public Administration, San Diego State Univ.) perceives this area in terms of a crisis of "space and place," conveying loss of identity and loss of community. He has personally interviewed architects, investigated buildings, and covered much of the ground of the book, reaching all the way back to Aztec Mexico. Faculty and researchers; professionals. P. Kaufman; Boston Architectural Center
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
