The Geography of Nowhere

The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape

By: James Howard Kunstler

Narrated by: Al Kessel

In elegant and often hilarious prose, Kunstler depicts our nation's evolution from the Pilgrim settlements to the modern auto suburb in all its ghastliness. The Geography of Nowhere tallies up the huge economic, social, and spiritual costs that America is paying for its car-crazed lifestyle. It is also a wake-up call for citizens to reinvent the places where we live and work, to build communities that are once again worthy of our affection. Kunstler proposes that by reviving civic art and civic life, we will rediscover public virtue and a new vision of the common good. "The future will require us to build better places," Kunstler says, "or the future will belong to other people in other societies."

The Geography of Nowhere has become a touchstone work in the two decades since its initial publication, its incisive commentary giving language to the feeling of millions of Americans that our nation's suburban environments were ceasing to be credible human habitats. Since that time, the work has inspired city planners, architects, legislators, designers, and citizens everywhere.

©1993, 2016 James Howard Kunstler (P)2019 Tantor

Timeless and Prescient

While JHK’s predictions for oil supply collapse has yet to occur, his analysis of what is wrong with the built environment in America remains spot on. This should be required reading for every planning student and city elected official.

narrator. adds full stops. for no reason.

the book is great. the narrator has weird punctuation, stopping in the middle of a sentence for no reason. very irritating.

Well-researched rant

Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi” drawn out into a darkly funny rant about American civic development.

Narrator sounds like a bitter Rod Serling doing an infomercial. It was a strong choice and distracting. But ultimately added to the hilarity. An interesting story.

The ugly result

A careful, painstakingly detailed log of our freeway to nowhere. Beautiful. More words are not required to compliment this labour of love.

Suburbia Jeremiad with poor narration

While this book was well researched, Kunstler does not take into account population growth since WW2. We can’t fit nearly 8 billion people into small towns. Still, it made me think about the cost of suburban neighborhoods, and made me a little depressed. The narrator sounded like he was merely pronouncing the individual words and not actually paying attention to the content, resulting in a choppy, disjointed, channel 5 news talking head style that was not pleasant to hear for 12 hours.