Reviews for City of the Silent: The Charlestonians of Magnolia Cemetery

The average rating for City of the Silent: The Charlestonians of Magnolia Cemetery based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-06-15 00:00:00 Tea Tsaava Charleston has always been one of my favorite cities. Not only is it a beautiful city, but it is full of southern history. As a South Carolina native and southerner, the history available has always been captivating. From the first time I ventured to Fort Sumter and the Battery as a boy, I have loved imagining the bombs heading toward Fort Sumter and the roll of carriages down cobblestoned streets. So this book was a natural fit for me. While I have never spent time in Magnolia Cemetery, I found that several people buried in those grounds are names familiar to my ears. But even while I've heard names, I knew very few stories. Those stories became real in these pages. I appreciated the voice of the narrator in these pages. Phillips does a great job of communicating the stories of these men and women in a serious yet fun-loving way. A great sense of humor blends with historical fact to make the stories come to life. He does a great job of condensing the stories to manageable sizes, spending more time on those of certain significance, and telling meaningful yet manageable stories. I really appreciate the style of writing and the obvious voice of the narrator. It was fun to read. This work of nonfiction read like a novel - it was easy to read and follow. The stories invoked a desire to return to Charleston and explore more history for myself. I definitely enjoyed this book.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-08-28 00:00:00 Steve Grier 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 !!"