The Place You Love Is Gone: Progress Hits Home - A Thought-Provoking Book on Urban Development & Changing Communities | Perfect for Sociology Students, City Planners & Readers Concerned About Modernization

Perhaps it is because I am originally from Akron, Ohio, one of the places where fellow native Pierson lovingly writes about with clarity and sorrow. Or perhaps it is just because I love well-written books about landscapes and places. Regardless, this book is still resonating with me several months after reading it. Pierson weaves in her own memoir of the places she has known and lived in her life with their history and quotes from other authors. Along the way she makes the point that we take our landscapes and special buildings for granted until it is too late and they have been replaced by strip malls and a more homogenous American background.For anyone who has ridden their bikes around their childhood neighborhoods or have known each house, each bush and tree, or corner store or the threads of roads and hills which form our memories of place, this book will have great meaning. You will be taken to your home place, wherever that may be, and you will see our vanishing American landscape with greater appreciation. Pierson's lucid, introspective prose is a pleasure to read.