Barbara Miller Lane. Houses for a New World
Builders and Buyers in American Suburbs, 1945–1965
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9495923 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Dianne Harris (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2017 |
| Volume | 122 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 528-529 |
| Publication date | 2017-04-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The American Historical Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0002-8762 • E-ISSN: 1937-5239 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/ahr/122.2.528 |
| OpenAlex | W2606250547 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
The residential sphere has long attracted the attention of architectural historians, though ordinary suburban houses have received relatively little scholarly scrutiny. Studying these houses can pose particular challenges for historians not only because they are so numerous, but also because the typical sorts of documents upon which architectural historians rely may be either scattered or poorly preserved. Barbara Miller Lane’s Houses for a New World: Builders and Buyers in American Suburbs, 1945–1965 will thus please readers who want to learn more about the formal evolution of specific suburban developments and suburban house forms around Los Angeles and Orange County, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Boston. Lane’s examination of the “builders” in her subtitle is the book’s clear strength. Readers looking for a book that rigorously analyzes these developments and houses in a broader historical context—one that includes an analysis of race, gender, and their intersections as they relate to the residential realm—or who are primarily interested in the “buyers” of her subtitle will likely be disappointed. Her archival research derived from developers’ records and architectural drawings is careful and detailed, thus constituting an important contribution to that aspect of a growing area of the field. Yet the book suffers from the author’s lack of attention to the critical frameworks and recently published scholarship—particularly the numerous published works examining the social history of housing—that provide the crucial historical context for her subject.
Archaeology · Context (archaeology) · History of architecture · Library science · Miller · Political science · Realm · Scholarship · Scrutiny · Sociology · Subject (documents) · Subtitle · Architecture · Historical and Cultural Archaeology Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies
| Citations per year | 0.25 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2018 - 2022 (5) |
| Highly cited | No |