John Stilgoe is just looking around. This is more difficult than it sounds,
particularly in our mediated age, when advances in both theory and technology too often seek to
replace the visual evidence before our own eyes rather than complement it. We are surrounded by
landscapes charged with our past, and yet from our earliest schooldays we are instructed not to
stare out the window. Someone who stops to look isn't only a rarity; he or she is
suspect. Landscape and Images records a lifetime spent observing
America's constructed landscapes. Stilgoe's essays follow the eclectic trains of thought
that have resulted from his observation, from the postcard preference for sunsets over sunrises to
the concept of "teen geography" to the unwillingness of Americans to walk up and down stairs. In
Stilgoe's hands, the subject of jack o' lanterns becomes an occasion to explore
centuries-old concepts of boundaries and trespassing, and to examine why this originally pagan
symbol has persisted into our own age. Even something as mundane as putting the cat out before going
to bed is traced back to fears of unwatched animals and an untended frontier fireplace. Stilgoe
ponders the forgotten connections between politics and painted landscapes and asks why a country
whose vast majority lives less than a hundred miles from a coast nonetheless looks to the rural
Midwest for the classic image of itself.At times breathtaking in their erudition, the
essays collected here are as meticulously researched as they are elegantly written. Stilgoe's
observations speak to specialists--whether they be artists, historians, or environmental
designers--as well as to the common reader. Our landscapes constitute a fascinating history of
accident and intent. The proof, says Stilgoe, is all around us.