Anthony Lukas Book Prize and the Christopher Award.
Rybczynski's book, A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the Nineteenth Century, won numerous awards, including the J. His books include The Perfect House: A Journey with the Renaissance Master Andrea Palladio The Look of Architecture City Life: Urban Expectations in a New World Last Harvest: From Cornfield to New Town and Home: A Short History of an Idea. He is the author of several books and frequently contributes to publications such as the New York Times, Atlantic Monthly, Architectural Record, Slate, and Preservation. "About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.Witold Rybczynski, FAIA, is a prominent writer and thinker on topics involving the built environment. Rybczynski's able perceptions illuminate all those developments, making this fascinating reading trip from de Tocqueville's observations to the present exurbs both exhilarating and rueful by turns. An early reform that achieved aesthetic success, the "City Beautiful" movement of the 1900s, exemplifies periodic civic self-examinations. Deftly conveying what planners expected their new towns to become, Rybczynski commands a wealth of trenchant detail that reveals bucolic attitudes (e.g., the American penchant for naming streets after trees) or evolving architectural fashions, such as the faddish "urban renewal" movement of the 1950s. Rather, they might reimagine their cities' potential for beauty and sociability in light of this history of urban development, from the first planned towns, Philadelphia and Williamsburg, to the chaotic sprawls of Houston and Los Angeles. Gazing at elegant Paris, a visitor from North America plaintively asked her companion, "Why aren't our cities like that?" Fortunately that companion was Rybczynski, an astute architectural historian whose knowledge and sparkling writing (e.g., Home, 1986) ensure that his readers will no longer think of their American cities as apres-teardowns in progress.
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