Visions of Paradise: Glimpses of Our Landscape's Legacy

Rating:
Summary: Description and Praise for Visions of Paradise
Review: "This species of work is vintage; it is born of the kind of intellectual history survey, made readable, that has been a staple of landscape architecture and American Studies scholars like Henry Nash Smith, Leo Marx, and Daniel Boorstin." --Paul Starrs, Editor, Geographical Review

"This is a wonderful book, one that many will read with gusto. It is elegant, thoughtful, insightful, warm and even funny in places. I read it as a traveler's companion instead of at a desk, and it was great company. I found myself pulled in, drawn to the combination of historical and modern observation, drawn to the sheer humaneness of the endeavor." --Hal Rothman, Former President, Environmental History Association

"This is an exceptionally readable work on the American attitudes toward pristine and altered landsapes which pioneers encountered, settled in, modified, and moved westward from during the past three centuries." --Michael Barbour, University of California, Davis

"I found this work a pleasant, extremely readable, unusually personal overview of key influences on the American landscape. I particularly liked the short personal anecdotes leading into chapters, such as the bus trip to Houston, the childhood trips to New Jersey, the walk in the forest of the Cascades. Simpson's affection for places and their history is contagious." --Bonnie Lloyd, San Francisco Exploratorium

The American Revolution gave birth not just to a new nation, but to a new landscape. America was paradise to its native inhabitants, while to the colonists, it was an unlimited land of opportunity, a moral and physical wilderness from which they could create paradise. Powerful people like Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton struggled to shape it to their opposing visions. Over the ensuing two hundred years, many other visions shaped the American landscape. Today, their imprints form a complex layering of messages-past and present, physical and cultural, public and private, local and national-that tell a story of many interwoven meanings. John Warfield Simpson traces this fascinating story in "Visions of Paradise," providing a fresh perspective from which to understand not only our landscape but also the way we steward our environment. Simpson describes the transformation of America from wilderness into an agrarian and suburban landscape as the nation expanded westward after the Revolution. He highlights the role of influential people in this transformation and the critical policies and programs they used to acquire, survey, and dispose of the public domain. He shows how their actions reflected changes in our traditional values that considered land as property and a commodity primarily for functional use. This transformation in values has yielded a landscape of contradictions: it is at once a landscape of freedom and opportunity, order and disorder, permanence and transience. Ours is an egalitarian and litigated landscape shaped by reason and mobility, he argues, one that reflects our historical sense of separation from and superiority over a limitless land of endless abundance and resilience. These perceptions, he shows, have blinded us to the environmental consequences of our actions and created a people who behave as though they are temporary occupants of the land rather than residents who enjoy a deep connection to the land. That connection, he concludes, holds the key to our contemporary environmental debate.

John Warfield Simpson is Associate Professor in the Knowlton School of Architecture and the School of Natural Resources at Ohio State University.

Rating:
Summary: Quick, but not a light read,....
Review: ..it's a great book. The personal anecdotes will speed you through a book more scholarly than it first appears. With the clean slate that North America presented the world upon it's discovery, it's amazing how well it's held up, considering all the different hands on the chalk!

Rating:
Summary: Excellent landscape book
Review: Every now and then a book comes along that evokes our experience of the landscape, books by authors such as William Least Heat-Moon, John Hanson Mitchell, Donald Meinig, John Stilgoe, or J. B. Jackson. With Visions of Paradise, John Warfield Simpson joins the group and goes beyond. He offers a wide ranging and readable description of the forces that shaped our landscape from conflicts in landscape values to public policy and law. Visions is a wonderful book filled with personal anecdotes that engage. Anyone interested in cities, suburbs and environmental stewardship hould have a copy of this handsome book

Rating:
Summary: A Revelation
Review: I am not a 'landscaper' in the grand or even minimal sense (tending to let my own backyard become overgrown), but I do have a layman's interest in history. Perhaps for those reasons I found 'Visions of Paradise' to be an enthralling introduction to the history of our American landscape. Simpson was able to engage my interest quickly with his obvious feeling for and sensitivity to our culture's rather short-sighted treatment of the natural landscape. As a native midwesterner I was particularly interested in his regional references but really found the entire volume to be captivating. He truly helped me to understand the national landscape as 'ours' in a collective sense. For the first time I have an informed appreciation of our land and believe that I have a role, however small, in its future. I will never be able to take a trip by car or plane in the same way again - Simpson's book has helped me understand the importance of my examining the nuances of all parts of our landscape, and being able to take a stronger position regarding its appropriate uses (even my own yard, which I am now cultivating more carefuly).

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful look of USA's beginnings, transitions, and present
Review: Mr. Simpson's book is an unparalleled look at this nation's beginnings, transitions, growing pains, and its current situation. To understand today's problems and land-use ethics, one must read this book. Through elbow grease, endless research and a fascination with the land, Mr. Simpson has created a classic that anyone involved with the land must read. On a personal note, Ohio residents will find this book particularly interesting, the development of Columbus is used as a typical example of settlement and expansion.

Rating:
Summary: very wordy
Review: The book has some good content, but the auther him-haws around. I enjoy a good book that can get to the point and drive it home. This book does not do that. It jumps around a lot and is hard to follow in places. I wouldn't recommend this book to other readers.