Dream homes in ideal communities are the subjects of this work. Sea Ranch, California and Seaside, Florida are two communities that have similar goals: to provide an environment that can enrich the lives of the residents. Two different approaches are examined. Sea Ranch is inspired by country life and the nature while Seaside is more of an urban experience set to accomodate people rather than the automobile. Both communities include "dream homes" although styles are markedly different because of climate, natural environment and regional styles.

Photography and graphics are first rate.

I had a hard time finishing this book. It has one good point: suburbs, by design, destroy the cohesion of communities. The author repeats this point (in my opinion) ad naseum throughout the book. He also idealizes community meeting places (the tavern, the drug store, main street) from the past. Nonetheless, I still think that we should all read this book. It gives at least a few hints about why we never see some of the people who live only two doors down form us. His solutions also might help us break down the isolation and anonymity of the 'burbs.

When was the last time you walked to your friendly, neighborhood tavern to shoot the breeze with the regulars? Oh, that's right. There is no such place. Find out why you'd be happier if there were.

Expecting a rehash of many of the now famous concepts of the "New Urbanism", I delayed actually reading this book for a long time. When I finally did it knocked me for a lovely, dizzy, exciting loop! Oldenburg may have put his finger directly on the reason why life in modern America has such an un-balanced, edgy, distressed feel to it. Bad planning! 50 years of letting officials and corporations extinguish our corner taverns, drugstores and other hang-outs has resulted in the extinguishing of our public lives. Something that work and family simply cannot compensate us for. And Oldenburg makes his surprisingly compelling case for these humblest of structures in a refreshingly brash, cranky tone. I began reading this book because of a certain technical interest and ended with my view of American life being, perhaps forever altered.

Another reactionary bewailing the loss of "community," by which he means places where white heterosexual male Republicans can pretend no one else exists. No celebration of diversity here! There is an insulting prediction that a proliferation of "great, good places" would eliminate the horrible problem of the existence of gay people. People of color are not mentioned at all, so one presumes they have already ceased to exist. No religious, ethnic, or linguistic minorities, no immigrants, no poor people, just smiling happy faces greeting cronies over coffee. It is astounding that such insensitivity exists in this day and age.

I found out about this book from the movie, "You've Got Mail." The director, Nora Ephron, mentions in the commentary of this movie Ray Oldenburg's theory of the third place. This book has helped me greatly in finding my third place, Starbucks. Nora Ephron refers to Starbucks as being a great third place and it certainly is. To sit and read, or to relax and have a cup of coffee, Starbucks is the place. My third place. This is a great book.

Oldenburg's scholarship here is a little fuzzy -- while I found myself agreeing with many of his points, much of his evidence seemed anecdotal. His cross-cultural comparisons were interesting: the French cafe and the Austrian coffeehouse are institutions that seem, well, very foreign to Americans.

There are no substantive mentions of hair salons or bookstores in this work. I'm not sure how they slipped into the title.

On the whole, this work raises interesting questions about the decline of public life and public space in American culture. Oldenburg throws a number of darts at the suburbs and poor urban planning, but seems to spend more time lamenting the lost innocence of small-town America than thinking about the future and how things could be turned around. There's a lot of thought-provoking material here, and I think this work represents a good jumping-off point for further consideration and research.