Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir | 
 enlarge | Author: D. J. Waldie
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
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Rating:  14 reviews
Sales Rank: 40120
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 194
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.6
ISBN: 0393327280
Dewey Decimal Number: 979.493
EAN: 9780393327281
ASIN: 0393327280
Publication Date: April 2005
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Amazon.com Review
Welcome to Lakewood, California, the world's largest suburb and the subject of an oddly mesmerizing account of its creation by D. J. Waldie. Waldie describes how bean fields were drawn up, sectioned off and divided up--leaving tracts for small houses of similar design. The author changes while the land around him does, in a story of how people make places and, more so, places make people.
Product Description
"Infinitely moving and powerful, just dead-on right, and absolutely original."—Joan Didion Since its publication in 1996, Holy Land has become an American classic. In "quick, translucent prose" (Michiko Kakutani, New York Times) that is at once lyrical and unsentimental, D. J. Waldie recounts growing up in Lakewood, California, a prototypical post-World War II suburb. Laid out in 316 sections as carefully measured as a grid of tract houses, Holy Land is by turns touching, eerie, funny, and encyclopedic in its handling of what was gained and lost when thousands of blue-collar families were thrown together in the suburbs of the 1950s. An intensely realized and wholly original memoir about the way in which a place can shape a life, Holy Land is ultimately about the resonance of choices—how wide a street should be, what to name a park—and the hopes that are realized in the habits of everyday life. 20 illustrations and a new introduction for this paperback edition.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 9 more reviews...
 Love the place, love the writing November 11, 2008
When a friend recommended Holy Land, he said, "It's about Lakewood!" I couldn't believe that someone had found something to say about the little suburb where we grew up. I bought the book out of curiosity; I wasn't expecting to find brilliant prose. But there it was.
I savored reading this book. After work, I would make a cup of tea and go out to my back yard and read sections slowly, loving the language... and remembering the years of my childhood. Like many folks, I never realized how precious my hometown was until I'd been gone for years.
This little book is a gem, and Waldie's writing is what makes it sparkle.
 excellent comprehensive Los Angeles History May 13, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
In southern California, land and water were everything in the 20th century. The author did an excellent job researching the tract house expansion from the construction details to the social impact they had family lifestyles. Especially interesting, was the explantation of the water rights and development of Artesia. All the familiar landmarks of the LA basin suddenly take on new meaning.
Poetics of place and time in the Los Angeles Palimpsest May 12, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
D. J. Waldie's Holy Land: a Suburban Memoir is so beautifully and carefully written that I found myself reading segments out loud for the simple pleasure of savoring the language. While writing of his life in a housing tract in Lakewood, California, Mr. Waldie, writing in short and interweaving passages and segments, examines his everyday life in an almost commonplace suburb with precision and grace. His family, neighbors and friends emerge as people we may know. His house has a familiarity to many of us, even though we have never been there. Mr. Waldie, however, sees everyday life so clearly and makes even the "how to" of putting together a stucco tract home so interesting that I could not put down this book and felt a great sadness when I had finished. His is a lovely and important story about a very smart and gentle man who cares deeply about aspects of Los Angeles history and is eager to hear stories of our Southern California future.
Wow! Great Book July 1, 2006
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I live in Lakewood with my husband and two (now grown) children. This book shares a lot of history that I was unaware of when we first moved here, and after reading it, I understand why Lakeood is as charming as it is. People stay here for generations. Parents live up the street from their children and their children's families. I have always loved it here and am very proud to call it "home".
a tour of a world very different than suburbs I know October 31, 2004
6 out of 11 found this review helpful
When I read this book, I was surprised by not by how universal Lakewood is, but how little Lakewood resembles the suburbs I grew up with.
In Lakewood, most blocks have sidewalks, streets have grids so you can walk to anyplace without going out of your way, and conveniences such as shopping are a long walk away- not exactly New Urbanism, but not exactly conventional modern sprawl either. Lakewood may be sprawl, but it is sprawl with a human face.
By contrast, in Atlanta (where I grew up) sidewalks end about 3 or 4 miles from downtown, in subdivisions built at about the same time as Lakewood or even a few years either- and usually nothing is within walking distance of a suburban house, and even if it was the absence of sidewalks (or often of any other accommodation to pedestrians such as walkable lawns; the streets often go right up to the street) would make walking very dangerous indeed. Atlanta is sprawl without a human face. I think Atlanta is certainly more typical of the South.
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