Reviews for Roosevelt and World War II

The average rating for Roosevelt and World War II based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-08-11 00:00:00 Renato Soares I read this in the midst of a bout of terrible, crippling nostalgia for LA after having to leave the city in late 2012 for grad school. I think it's somewhat of a literary trope about LA that people love it despite the fact that they really aren't supposed to. Honestly, the kind of love people like Reyner Banham and I have for LA just doesn't add up: You spend most of your time in awful traffic on terrible old freeways to navigate a grotesque suburban sprawl that paradoxically features almost nowhere to park, the job you can't find does nothing to help you meet the absurd costs of living, it's the exemplar of hyperbolic consumer culture, global warming has turned good weather into one more thing to which the wealthy westsiders lay exclusive claim, and the whole city is an architectural and urban planning disaster. And yet, Reyner Banham was a distinguished architectural critic who professed an unabashed love for the city. If you are not familiar with the technical vocabulary of architecture (as I wasn't when I read this), you will find some of it a bit confusing, but Banham was clearly writing with a wider audience in mind so you'll get enough out of it, as I sure did. His love for the city really comes through in the prose, and that makes it a real joy to read, even if you don't always know what he's going on about. His sudden, uncharacteristically dismissive attitude toward downtown is hilarious. I wonder what he would say about its current "comeback." A nice supplement to the book is an old BBC (I think) special featuring him driving around LA listening to an eight-track in his car. I first saw it on YouTube but I've noticed it comes and goes. It even features his own nerdy narration. I recommend this book to anyone interested in architecture or anyone who's feelin' nostalgic about good ol' LA.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-11-16 00:00:00 Mitzi Shepherd Nicely thought-out, a serious analysis of the non-urban Urban Center without-a-center that is LA. Or was L.A. Necessarily compartmentalized, Banham's study takes an unrelated set of parameters and relates them from an overhead perspective on history, development, design, influences. What are now a deeply tangled set of cultural aspects were a little less so in 1971, when this was published. So something of a time-capsule, but one that looks imaginatively toward the future too. It's not really fair to look at 2009 Los Angeles and pronounce judgements on Banham's vision; but it's fair to say that his optimistic and buoyant post-urban parsing of the course ahead hasn't evolved quite as he foresaw so long ago. Banham wanted to lay the foundation, it would seem, for the new direction in The American Lifestyle, it's minimum requirements, glories, idiosyncracies, conveniences and goals. But he pictures a world of wonder, a sunny, urban encyclopedia accessible by friendly freeway off-ramp, to each fortunate, smiling everyman of the future. From the intriguing buildings of RM Schindler to the cartoon / drive-in schlock, Banham seems to have counted it all as fairly benevolent, a wealth of profuse intermingling, leading to an unpredictable if inevitable synthesis that would gel sometime in the future. His vision of "Autopia", however, must leave the contemporary reader mystified : "The banks and cuttings of the freeways are often the only topographical features of note in the townscape, and the planting on their slopes can make a contribution to the local environment that outweighs the disturbances caused by their construction..." Surely, even thirty-eight years ago, the insight of this statement must have been fairly shallow : "Furthermore, the actual experience of driving on the freeways prints itself deeply on the conscious mind and unthinking reflexes. As you acquire the special skills involved, the Los Angeles freeways become a special way of being alive, which can be duplicated on other systems ... but not with this totality and extremity." L.A. was always a vast, epicurean Doughnut and Hole experience, though, so Banham can't really be faulted for a smart if otherwise all-doughnut perspective. To his credit, he's a shrewd judge of individual projects and architecture, rendering certain aspects of the city-in-the-making with deft & critical detail. It's on the Urban Planning And Design side where he might've wanted to hedge his bets a little more broadly. Absolutely pick this up if you live in Los Angeles. It's a hard city to read, maybe not a city at all, and any solid attempt at getting an overall picture is a worthwhile one. Just maybe, the urban-center without-a-center IS a doughnut, after all. As those post-ironists in Randy Newman's band will tell anyone who asks ---- "L.A. ! We love it !!"