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The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Lawn
W. W. Norton
March 2006
On Sale: March 6, 2006
224 pages ISBN: 0393060845 EAN: 9780393060843 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
Americans are locked in a love-hate relationship with
their lawns, and Ted Steinberg tells you why.
The
rise of the perfect lawn represents one of the most profound
transformations in the history of the American landscape.
Today the lawn is one of America's leading "crops,"
outstripping cotton in acres by a factor of two. American
Green, Ted Steinberg's witty exposé of this sometimes
bizarre phenomenon, traces the history of the lawn from its
explosion in the postwar suburban community of
Levittown—just miles from where Steinberg grew up—to the
present love affair with turf colorants, leaf blowers, and
riding mowers. For half a century, Americans have been on a
quest for the greenest, weed-free, ultra-trim turf
imaginable. But perfection has its costs. Blending
muckraking journalism and social history, Steinberg looks at
both the lighter and the darker side of the all-American
landscape, from mower accidents and pesticide poisonings to
lawn-mower racing and the man so addicted to perfection that
he re-created Augusta's 12th hole in his backyard. 40
illustrations.
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