A first class study of the background to the Case Study Houses project created by the southern Californian Arts & Architecture magazine. This book was originally published in conjunction with an exhibition of the program at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles in 1989-1990. It has plenty of photos and plans (though some the photos are just a little too dark) to illustrate the eight main essays. Editor Elizabeth Smith and Amelia Jones devote forty-two pages to the actual houses with succinct descriptions, plans and photos. The rest of this marvellous book has a huge amount of information relating to housing and the post-war environment and how the thirty-six prototype houses had a wide influence on the domestic architecture that followed.

I particularly enjoyed the two essays by Thomas Hines and also Dolores Hayden's essay 'Model Houses for the Millions: architects' dreams, builders' boasts, residents' dilemmas'. The back of the book has six contemporary architects ideas and plans for housing in 'Extending the Case Study Concept', followed by biographies, chronology, bibliography and index.

Was the project worth it? Architectural writer Esther McCoy summed it up as... 'Perceived as a prototype that was to be enacted on a mass scale, the Case Study House program was a failure. Perceived as a prophetic statement, however, as a demonstration of trends and influences that would in one way or another achieve realization, the program must be judged a success. Perceived as art, finally, an approach suggested by their presence in The Museum of Contemporary Art, the Case Study Houses have won the right to be recognized and respected in the history of American design'.

You might think that everything about the CSH was included in this book but Elizabeth Smith has just edited another one called (you guessed it) 'Case Study Houses', a beautiful, very expensive ... very heavy (twelve pounds) very big (opens up to over thirty-two inches wide) 440 page visual history with hundreds of photos (especially from Julius Shulman) plans and drawings. What was missing from this sumptuous volume was all the information in 'Blueprints for Modern Living' so if you go for both books you really will have the COMPLETE CSH experience.

Nuetra, Soriano, Ellwood, Koenig - Blueprints for moder living is the catalogue for a major exhibit at the LA MoCA in the late 80's. It is an excellent sourcebook for those intersted in post war residential architecture. Modern Architecture (with a capital A) was going to change the world, as these bold case-study house designs show. This book contains a great deal more than just documenting the Case Study Building Program of the 50's. There are essays by noted historians Esther McCoy, Thomas Hines and Reyner Banham and others as well. These essays provide the background for the case study program and the mood of the public (especially in Califonia) after WW2. There is also an essay on publisher Joh Estnza and the Arts and Architecture Magazine that sponsored the program. The last chapter "Extending the Case Study Concept" documents the exhibit of six new designs (1987) commisioned by the Museum for a multi family housing project. Architects include: Eric Owen Moss, Toyo Ito and Hogetts & Fung. Lastly there are bio's on the architects, a timeline of events for the program and resourcefull bibliography. As always, the Julious Shulman photographs are stunning. This is a must have for the student of Modernism.

I have read this book time and time again (from the library) and it is excellent. The photographs are exquisite, and I, being compulsed to read every modern architecture book available, thoroughly enjoyed it.

New•Land•Marks: Public Art, Community, and the Meaning of Place, edited by Penny Balkin Bach, is the book version of an exhibition of models and proposals for an ambitions public art project in Philadelphia, undertaken by the Fairmount Park Art Association. In a way, the show and book are virtual public art: the photographs, texts, and models are a vision of what could happen, not only in this project but in the larger area of community-based public art. Sixteen artists provide visions of the city, communities within it, and the interaction of art, the public, and public space. The book itself is beautifully designed: with innovative site photographs and innovative presentation of the texts and models proposed for each site. This book breaks new ground in the field of public art.

Hine's work is a meticulously researched, wonderfully illustrated work on how the American mindset of the 1950s and 1960s created both the consumer culture and the physical environment in which it thrives. All of this is masquerading as an enjoyable, nostalgic, amusement park ride through the world of split-level houses, tail finned cars, and orange Naugahyde-upholstered furniture. It's a fun read for all baby boomers as well as for any of their children who are trying to figure out why their parents think pink and green go together. By the way, I also recommend this book to any Europeans trying to understand American culture. Read this and the short story "The Concrete Mixer" by Ray Bradbury and you'll understand while McDonalds and Wal-Mart can't be stopped.

I found this book in college, used as a text for the Industrial Design dept. I was a Criminal Justice major myself, but found this a great look at American culture.

This book could be a blueprint for the whimsical looks at the 50's seen on History Channel documentaries.

Hines book is a fun, unpretentious look at the times that led to the designs. It is refreshing that the author didn't take the easy route and simply churn out a tome laundry listing trends simply to make fun of them. The book shows a great understanding and admiration of the industrial art of the era without any pretense or hubris

While the colorful plastic and steel designs of the '50's and '60's lacked the beauty of the bronze and silk Art Deco styles of the '20' s and '30's, they are still full of a spirit of fun and excitement.

Before Thomas Hine invented the term "Populuxe," the hopeful designs found in '50's and '60's fashion, furniture, architecture and automobiles were linked with the Space Age, the mighty atom, Rock 'n' Roll, and a nation in love with its wheels. Looking toward a bright future helped the Western world bear the reality of the shadow of Communism. As a guy with dim memories of this era I can say that this book is great fun to read with plenty of vintage pictures and insight into how the Space Age came to be and what it all meant.

FINALLY a new book on the great works of Irving Gill!

To look back at the work of Irving Gill is a revelation. His buildings could come out of the architecture studio of today with their pared down facades, sparse oranamentation, and uniquely angled roof lines. His hotel in Torrance, Ca looks like something that a circa 2000 urban planning commission would commend--with its pedestrian friendly entrance, and urbane appearance.

If Gill were alive today, he would throw up at what is being built in Southern California. The infantilization of buildings--with needlessly narcissistic angles, jarring colors, and arbitrary roof lines calls out for discipline of Gill. [For more nonsensical, solipsistic and soccer mommy design architecture of today, check out the new Studio City Library on Whitsett and Moorpark]

Gill opened up buildings to their surroundings, united interiors and exteriors. He built in a way that did not diminish the occupants of his buildings, but enhanced their lives. So little ego, so much concern for the client. This book is a remarkable look into one of the early geniuses of architecture in California.

to an architect the purpose of this book is unclear. The subject is an architect with an extremely intersting life, who designed very interesting buildings. The subtitle of the book gives us the impression that the book is about architecture. In reality it only gives us a very poor impression of the buildings designed by Neutra: only very small pictures are displayed of what he designed. family snap-shots on the other hand, are everywhere and in larger sizes.
Of course this can be a purpose of the writer. However, the uncritical way and blind admiration for Neutra makes the book boring to read an tiresome.
I suggest that anyone that is interested in the works of Neutra buy another book, with better, and more pictures of his buildings an floor plans to go with them. His buildings deserve it.

this is an excellent account of the life and works of richard neutra. i would recommend this book to anyone interested in modern architecture, both regionally and internationally. More color images would have been appreciated, although this does not detract from the overall attractiveness of the book.

The classic Neutra companion; very informative. Although I would have liked to have seen current color photographs of the great RJN's work along with the extensive B&W ones (actually I believe a volume of that nature is in the works), this retrospective is nonetheless very broad in its scope and has many interesting stories about the building of the structures during Neutra's life. Also contains a complete list of his buildings and houses, along with locations and dates of construction.

Thomas Hines is one of the best professors at UCLA; his classes on architectural history remain some of my very favorites from my four years at the school. This book is a fascinating account of architect Burnham's personal and professional life, and is bound to be interesting to students both of architecture, history and human nature.

The previous reviews by C. Goodwin and R. Walker pretty much sum the book up. I liked the book, but would have preferred a little more depth.

As excited as I was about this book when I heard about it, I wasn't sure what to think after reading a few reviews -- several were quite tough on the book for being a bit superficial and anecdotal. Still, Hine -- who writes about design and consumer culture and the like, most famously in the book Populuxe -- has an eye for great subjects, so I decided to check it out. His "cultural history" of shopping is in fact rather slim, at just over 200 pages. And Hine is clearly aiming for a pop style, not an academic one. That's fine, but the reviewers did have a point -- he glosses a lot of things that I would like to have seen explored more fully, and I never could figure out exactly what Hine's motivation was for doing the book in the first place. In many ways he's simply defending shopping as natural human behavior, but he frequently resorts to sweeping generalizations, and rarely presents surprising facts. The result is fine as an overview, but kind of unsatisfying -- and I was particularly annoyed at how vague his end notes/source notes were. On the plus side, this is an excellent book if you're slightly interested in the topic, but don't want to be weighed down with a lot of heavy theory. But if you're *really* interested in the topic, you'll be frustrated -- and you'll end up scrutinizing the bibliography trying to figure out which of the books Hine relied on might be the most illuminating. So in the end I was slightly entertained, but not very fulfilled -- which sort of sounds like a lot of shopping trips I've been on.

I really wanted to like this book. The reviews were glowing and, as a former marketing professor, I was more than a little interested.

I Want That is a birds eye view of shopping, with pages devoted to everything from gift giving to mall design to deviant buying behavior. There's a history of shopping and a sociology of shopping. Each chapter -- and some of the headings -- could be the topic of a doctoral dissertation. Brevity in this case has become misleading and, frankly,
not very exciting. All the juicy stuff has been edited out!

For example, Hine devotes just a few pages to compulsive buying, yet there has been considerable research on this topic by marketing researchers as well as clinical psychologists. There are correlations with other forms of addiction, while Hine notes only gambling. There are degrees of compulsion that vary by person and situation.

The chapter on attention emphasizes that shoppers can judge without being judged. Hine suggests that friends who join the shopper may be judgmental, implying that friends decrease shopping; however, research shows that people who shop together buy more.

The author cites research that suggests people continue to follow traditional gender roles. The real story is the change. In fact, some observers believe retailing has been transformed by gender roles more than by any other factor. Why do stores stay open 24/7? Why do more teens do the family shopping these days? What about men who are self-described clothes horses? And while women still buy most Christmas gifts, we need too recognize the increasing numbers of single-person households and families who choose to spend Christmas on a cruise.

Anyone who says, "Wow -- a book on shopping! What a great idea!" will probably enjoy this book. Those who are aware of other books on the topic, offering greater depth and insight, will be dissatisfied. This book lacks the focus, depth and analytical underpinnings of Paco Underhill's Why We Buy and Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point. And I wish the author had looked at some research published in journals, not just a selection of books.

Thomas Hine's "The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager" is based on a very interesting topic, one which I was extremely excited to learn more about. However, when I began reading the book, I was immediately turned off by Hine's writing style. Hine took a topic that could have been a great work of sociology, and turned it into nothing more than a textbook of history. Occasionally, he gets off topic, and uses first person not to share his own experiences, but to say something like, "I have already talked about..." His sources aren't cited in the text, and his sentences are short, choppy, and have no real flow to them. He often touches on greatness and his writing at times flourishes, but for the most part, the book reads like a poorly completed textbook. Everything I got from this book's 300 pages can be gathered by simply reading the inner sleeve of the cover and the preface. No real need to waste your time here.

Tom Hine's book, The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager, perceptively traces the 3-century history of younger people (those in their teen years) in Colonial and 18th century times, and on to the creation of the "teenager," as a result of post World War I growth of high schools. Throughout Hine chronicles how these younger people have been distrusted and viewed with panic by adults. The decline of the teenager, Hine says, is shown by high school tribalism, with numerous cults and subcults, silently posing in public, but communicating with no one but themselves. This is a witty and valuable book, one that should be in the library of every American parent.

-- Forrest R. Pitts, Prof. of Geography (Emeritus)

Anyone who wants to understand the American teenager or American culture of the 20th century must read this book. Essential to any student of anthropology, archaeology, sociology, architectural history or popular culture. Extraordinary insights which reflect a remarkable and creative understanding of our own history and place in time.

What can I say? As a book about packaging, it should take a lesson from itself. Sheesh...!

New industries, activities, and economies have come about because of innovations in the packaging industry. Self service shopping, product standardization and labeling, convenience foods, brand building and marketing have all been greatly affected by innovations in this industry. Whether through the use of MRE's (Meals Ready to Eat used by the military) or the stuff your Big Mac is wrapped in at McDonalds, packaging has both changed our lifestyles and helped us adapt to a changing world. As a history of the industry and the changes it has brought about over the years, this is a good book. There is not much in the way of the psycology of packaging as indicated in the title, so if you are looking for that skip this book.

Hine takes us through the rise of modern consumer packaging, spurred by the change in grocery stores from the old general store to self-serve supermarket. Intelligent and informative for marketers, package designers and just plain folks.