Williams is a landscape architect on a mission to examine how elaborately constructed small towns ended up being abandoned with the proliferation of interstate highways, strip malls, and big-box retailers. He traveled extensively throughout the land, camera in hand, wrote field notes, and consulted U.S. Geological Survey and Sanborn insurance maps in the quest to understand the “urban pathology,” as he puts it, of small town life. The thesis of this elegantly written and produced book is that “the homogenizing effects of contemporary American culture” have jeopardized the distinctive histories of the nation’s small towns, as evidenced by the deserted storefronts, grain elevators, and waterpower canals that now grace once vibrant landscapes (15).
Five case studies, corresponding to five interstate exits, form the core of the book, each one representing a different region of the country—New England, the American South, the Great Plains, the Southwest, and California. He explores the...