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lisawhelpley's review against another edition
3.0
I wish this book had covered concepts and issues in a deeper way.
chillcox15's review against another edition
2.0
Jason Diamond's The Sprawl examines the authors relationship to the suburbs and the possibility of considering the suburbs as a locus of creative potential. While Diamond lodges some interesting points in that 'reconsidering,' the specific cultural analysis of each section is pretty thin, without enough original insight to really carry the wide-ranging net of references and situations that Diamond discusses. I wish that this book had pushed itself in more of a memoiristic direction rather than the cultural studies position it is representing itself as, since that seems to be what Diamond himself is pulling this book towards.
erincataldi's review against another edition
3.0
I love reading about microhistories and I was so intrigued to read more about American suburbs. I didn't grow up in one but I am happily living in one now - and boy is the sprawl growing. I appreciated that the author was close in age to me so I got a lot of his movie and music references as well as cultural touchstones. This nonfiction book reads more as a series of short essays from examining the exclusionary nature of suburbs to malls to garage bands to pop culture references. This book is not a love letter to suburbs but neither is it a hate letter, it's a little bit of history and sociology. A fascinating look at suburbs, albeit slow at parts.
k80uva's review against another edition
2.0
It's a pleasant read, and I liked the idea, but I think this book had too much breadth and not enough depth. It jumps around geographically and chronologically, and in trying to mix history, pop culture essay, and memoir it doesn't stay anchored in any one of those things long enough. I also felt sort of surprised that while it says at the beginning that it's going to uncover hidden things and challenge assumptions about the suburbs, the book winds up reifying a lot of stereotypes about suburbs (that they're white, stultifying, and all the same). If it was going to be a history, it needed to be more specific and more deeply researched. If it was going to be a memoir, it needed to be more specific and personal. And if was going to be a cultural meditation, it needed more diverse examples and more effort made to talk to other people. There are a few moments in the book where the author goes to a current suburb and looks at people and considers asking them what they think but then doesn't. That decision means we're not getting much of a picture of what people living in suburbs right now think about them, or how suburbs vary from place to place, or how the reality and the image of suburbs has evolved from the postwar period to now.
mehilbert's review against another edition
2.0
2.5
This is a book that can’t decide what it wants to be. It presents itself as analysis but the author makes his own personal experiences such a part of the text that his bias is apparent in a way that makes me question the accuracy of many of his claims.
(The audio reader is awful)
This is a book that can’t decide what it wants to be. It presents itself as analysis but the author makes his own personal experiences such a part of the text that his bias is apparent in a way that makes me question the accuracy of many of his claims.
(The audio reader is awful)