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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 exposΓ© of this sometimes bizarre phenomenon, traces the history of the lawn from its explosion in the postwar suburban community of Levittownβjust miles from where Steinberg grew upβto 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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