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Outside Lies Magic: Regaining History and Awareness in Everyday Places | 
 enlarge | Authors: John R. Stilgoe, John Stilgoe
Publisher: Walker & Company
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy Used: $1.73
You Save: $13.22 (88%)
New (38) Used (33) from $1.73
Avg. Customer Rating:  16 reviews
Sales Rank: 264178
Media: Paperback
Edition: 0
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 208
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 4.8 x 0.6
ISBN: 0802775632
Dewey Decimal Number: 301
EAN: 9780802775634
ASIN: 0802775632
Publication Date: April 1, 1999
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Help save a tree. Buy all your used books from Green Earth Books. Read -> Recycle -> Reuse!
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
What lies along the highway, just out of sight? How about behind that building? Or under the street? Most of us muse idly about such things as we take our walks or drive our cars, but only a few go further and explore the secret histories of the places where we live. Landscape historian John R. Stilgoe is one of these intrepid explorers; for years he has taught Harvard students to open their senses to the created environment we share, to gently dissect our neighborhoods and public spaces for the knowledge hidden in plain sight. In Outside Lies Magic, he lets us all in on these wonderful secrets. Guiding us on tracks laid by utility and railroad companies, showing us the hidden territory of postal systems, Stilgoe reminds us that important frontiers lie invisible in our backyards and side streets, waiting for our attention. Though more interested in showing us how to see than telling us what there is to see, his descriptions of power-line right-of-ways, alley-side entrances, and hobo jungles provide compelling incentive for the reader to take his advice to heart and start looking around and asking questions of the community. If you think it's important to "think locally," Outside Lies Magic is an outstanding training manual. --Rob Lightner
Product Description
Outside Lies Magic is a book about the acute observation of ordinary things, about becoming aware in everyday places, about seeing in utterly new ways, about enriching your life unexpectedly.
For more than 20 years, John R. Stilgoe has developed and practiced the art of exploring the everyday world around us, where so much lies hidden just beneath the surface, offering uncommon knowledge if we but know what to look for. In this remarkable book, Stilgoe inspires us to become explorers on our own–on foot or on bicycle–and by so doing to reap the benefits of escaping, even temporarily, the traps of our programmed lives.
"Exploration encourages creativity, serendipity, invention," he writes. And while sharing his insights on how to explore, Stilgoe provides a fascinating pocket history of the American landscape, as striking in its originality as it is revealing. Stilgoe dissects our visual surroundings; his observations will transform the way you see everything. Through his eyes, an abandoned railroad line is redolent of history and future promise; front lawns recall our agrarian past; vacant lots hold cathedrals of potential.
From the electrical grid overhead to fences, malls, and main streets, Stilgoe offers a fresh understanding of the links and fractures in our society. After reading Outside Lies Magic, your world will never look the same again.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 11 more reviews...
 Loved This Book November 4, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Outside Lies Magic is like no other book I've read. Written in a flowing, sensuous style, it provides a new way to view the world.
Read it, and your life will change
Quick, interesting read November 3, 2007
Got this book based on a friend's recommendation. Read it this morning. It's one of those books whose ideas far exceed the quality of the writing. Lots of (slightly) hidden details to think about, though the "as you bike about" narrative is pretty annoying.
Especially on the mail delivery and railroad line sections made me think. I remember my granddad talking about twice a day mail delivery, Sunday mail delivery, the fast passenger trains...
the magic of the ordinary January 14, 2007
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is the concentrated essence of a life's work. It shows us that connection is still possible in this disconnected age. It shows us that America's history is not captive in printed pages and tv documentaries, but lives all around in the building and in the pulling down, in the shiny new and in the rusted.
Stilgoe does not illuminate the unremarkable, instead he reflects the light that he sees emanating from it. A remarkable achievement. A remarkable book. Highly recommended.
 187 pages of romantic drudgery September 8, 2005
2 out of 20 found this review helpful
This book just seems to go on and on about all the little things we seem to miss in this electronic era that we live in, at face value this does have some truth to it, I myself was intrigued by the concept. But right from the very beginning you realize that these are things that are worth forgetting about. The book seems as if it was written for the specific interests of an autistic child.
I don't care about the why the grass grows the way it does on the interstate freeway and fail to see why anyone else would either.
Fascinating and Enervating February 4, 2005
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
Possibly the most fascinating book I have read since Carl Sagan's "The Dragons of Eden". How often do you read a book that makes you want to get up off your chair (perhaps taking the book with you if you haven't finished yet) and wander off for outside adventures with its tantalizing accounts of what you will find in your neighborhood and town, and their outlying areas?!
Stilgoe draws us out into the "real world" page by page in this exploration of the modern world around us, its intriguing history of urban and rural constructions, and what it all means. A great book especially in that once you have read it, it continues giving to you as you take what you have learned from it and go further into the everyday world with it.
Talking about this book practically makes me jump up and down with excitement over the possibilities. No, wait -- it's LITERAL! I am, in fact, jumping up and down.
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