from the back of the book: “Beautifully written, passionate, and engaged, without question this work makes a significant contribution. It is an urgent call to revitalize literary studies within the American activist progressive tradition, and Elizabeth Ammons gives the subject exactly the treatment it needs. In discussing the activist tradition in American literature, Ammons’s goal is to make that literature, and literary criticism too, available, accessible, and important. She seeks to open new conversations with practicing scholars, teachers, and graduate students. These are important conversations about social justice, environmental threats, capitalism run amok, and destructive exploitation of lands and peoples. She reads both the literature and the literary criticism as devices for opening these conversations and beginning the process of problem solving.”—Annette Kolodny, author, The Lay of the Land and The Land before Her
It is SOO agreeable and easy to read I was impelled to look up the author - here she is!
This would be a very congenial read for progressive, humanist teachers. I am finding it quite inspiring...
I was also interested in this book, the bulk of which is taken up with Italian squares, then other European ones,
then four American ones at the end. Anyway I thought it would be representative of communities, but it seems quite sterile to me. Hundreds of color photographs and architectural drawings and hardly any humanity. Where are the kids? Where are the vendors? Where are the gypsy caravans? I don't think it's the books fault - it's the way I interpret things. When I think of public squares, I guess I interpret that as "village green" not civic center, or financial district.
Now this one does not disappoint! Every page has color photographs and ideas useful to home dwellers, business people, industry and government.
really really inspiring!
for example, old metal meal trays from a restaurant served as structural support for windows.
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