Reviews for Structural Aspects Of Building Conservation

The average rating for Structural Aspects Of Building Conservation based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-09-30 00:00:00 Kenneth Prygon Comparing other reviews of this book on GoodReads is interesting. Some complain Farmer spent too much time with Mount Timp (the first part of the book actually deals with Utah Lake, the Utah Valley, not the mountain that later came to dominate the landscape in the mind of residents), while others complain that Farmer derailed too often (there are frequent excursions into other parts of the United States in interesting discussions about music, toponyms, folklore, tourism, masculinity, scouting, etc.) As a formerly avid Utah hiker I especially enjoyed his discussions of the rise of national hike culture which I was completely unfamiliar with. As a Mormon I was unsettled by his straight-forward treatment of Mormon/American Indian relations in the 19th century. As a religious studies scholar I was impressed by the range of topics discussed and the geographic and cultural scope. This is a truly ambitious book, and should serve as a model for other works exploring relationships between religion, politics, class, ethnicity, gender, memory and forgetting--all through a guiding lens of the social construction of geography.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-06-15 00:00:00 Jonathan Aid Hardcover. This is one of the most interesting books I've read in a long time. Moving back to UT, I've had a keen interest in the local history and geography, and Farmer provided that in spades. I'd call him the Bill Bryson of Utah. The level of extralocal knowledge he spews is astonishing. On Zion's Mount changed how I think about Mormon-Native American relations, the hydrological oasis that is (or was) the Wasatch Front, place-names, and the collective forgetfulness of Utahns. 4 stars because (a) the last few chapters digress in a long-winded, unnecessary manner (curse of Farmer's encyclopedic knowledge about Indian toponyms and folklore), (b) Farmer's occasional one-sided treatment of non-environmentalists + euro settlers, and (c) the content can be repetitious and, rarely, border on conjecture. Still, highly recommend for those intrigued by the settlement of UT, native relations, and perceptions of the natural landmarks.