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The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Lawn
by Ted Steinberg & Theodore Steinberg
Americans are locked in a love-hate relationship with their lawns, and Ted Steinberg tells you why. The rise of the perfect lawn represents one of the most profound transformations in the history of the American landscape. Today the lawn is one of America's leading "crops," outstripping cotton in acres by a factor of two. American Green, Ted Steinberg's witty exposé of this sometimes bizarre phenomenon, traces the history of the lawn from its explosion in the postwar suburban community of Levittown—just miles from where Steinberg grew up—to the present love affair with turf colorants, leaf blowers, and riding mowers. For half a century, Americans have been on a quest for the greenest, weed-free, ultra-trim turf imaginable. But perfection has its costs. Blending muckraking journalism and social history, Steinberg looks at both the lighter and the darker side of the all-American landscape, from mower accidents and pesticide poisonings to lawn-mower racing and the man so addicted to perfection that he re-created Augusta's 12th hole in his backyard.
"There's plenty of muckraking outrage, but it's delivered in a friendly, engaging voice that might just win over skeptics." - PW.- Kirkus.
This information about American Green was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
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