Subjects:  1. (Cathy A.)    2. Biography    3. Design and construction    4. General    5. Johnson, Cathy    6. Log cabins    7. Missouri    8. Natural history    9. Naturalists    10. Nature / Field Guide Books    11. Nature/Ecology    12. Nature / General   

Subjects:  1. Architecture    2. Construction - General    3. Design and construction    4. Earth sheltered houses    5. Log cabins and houses    6. Log-end houses    7. Technology & Industrial Arts   

Reviews (5)

Creative Cottage Vacation Homes!
These plans offer perfect solutions for families seeking a Key West Style
I owned this book for several years until Mr.Right came along. High Expectations, Low results
I found this book to be a real disappointment; the "cottages" would be better identified as sea side mansions.Moreover, if you've done any type of browsing through home plan books, you'll recognize this collection--the plans have been printed in many other books albeit without the soft pastel colors added to the pictures of the "cottages" contained in this book.The colors, combined with a high grade printing paper make for a wonderful coffee table book but, zero practicality lies within the pages. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Architecture    2. Cottages    3. Designs and plans    4. Domestic    5. Home Improvement / Construction    6. House Plans    7. Seaside architecture    8. United States   

Subjects:  1. Architecture    2. Architecture, Domestic    3. Commercial buildings    4. Design & Drafting    5. Designs and plans    6. Do-It-Yourself    7. House & Home    8. Interior Design - General    9. Interior architecture    10. Public, Commercial, or Industrial Buildings    11. Remodeling & Renovation - General    12. Space (Architecture)    13. Architecture / Design & Drafting    14. Interior design   

Reviews (6)

Wonderful book!
I am stunned to see some bad reviews for this book! I came across it accidentally at the library and intend to buy it soon. It is certainly not a "garden book" in the sense of what to plant where. What it is is an extraordinary history of grandmothers' gardens and accompanying art, culture, and values. I love cottage gardening, history, the Arts and Crafts movement, Gertrude Jekyll, etc. and this book is about many of these things. I've also learned through it of many interesting books and writers and plan to research them. Highly recommended. Well written too.

Disappointing
I was really disappointed in this book - it's more of an art history book than a gardening book, and it's a history of some fairly insignificant art at that (with some exceptions).I found the text to just be a list of artwork.It was extremely uninformative.Even the illustrations weren't all that attractive, since so many were in black and white.

Seeing the garden through an artist's eyes
I'd borrowed this book from the library and I had to go out and buy it! If you are a painter and love the era of early American Impressionism, you'll love this book because it shows you the paintings and it shows you the actual gardens that inspired them.I see gardens as potential painting subjects - especially the "cottage gardens" or "grandmother's gardens" - that were so inspiring to the artists of the late 1800s. If you don't paint, you probably won't get the point of this book. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Cottage gardens    2. Essays    3. Garden Design    4. Gardening    5. Gardening / Horticulture    6. Gardening/Plants    7. Gardens, American    8. History    9. Landscape    10. Landscape Horticulture    11. Landscape gardening    12. Special Subjects In Art    13. United States    14. 20th century    15. Garden design & planning    16. Gardening / General    17. Gardens (descriptions, history etc)    18. USA    19. c 1800 to c 1900   

Subjects:  1. Cottages    2. Log cabins    3. Vacation homes   

Editorial Review

Robin Williams and Sally Field lived the dream of many in the movie Read more

Reviews (4)

Less is more in this small book about small homes...
I liked the book. Its not a builder's treatise nor a decorator's reference, but it contains elements of both, with a little landscape design thrown in for good measure. Its an abbreviated look at the essence of cottage living, what makes the cottage lifestyle unique and (for some) worthwhile. And it's illustrated with a cross-section of styles from the San Francisco Bay area, from Maybeck to Modern, Victorian to Houseboat. An extremely boring little book
I read about this book in an amazon customer review that was attached to another book, so I got this. Mistake! Iwas hoping to get some ideas and inspiration, but all I found here was a lineup of depressing little homes. And mostly in beiges and brown. I couldn't wait to escape from the pages of this book. Also, the book's title suggests that this will be about cottages, in general, but it's about San Francisco area cottages.If you want cottage-style decorating, this is not the book for you. It won't help you much if you want to build a new cottage either. it's more like a little term paper on one region's homes.

The classic book on San Francisco Bay Area cottages
I am a native San Franciscan living in a middle-of-the-block cottage inwhat the author calls "that quirky San Francisco tradition of a backyard house."With the assistance of Sally B. Woodbridge's excellenthistorical introduction, Richard Sexton describes our San Francisco BayArea cottages perfectly.The superb photographs complement quotes fromsome of the owners regarding what they think about their cottages:"Living in a cottage is somewhat like living on a ship.One learns tobe very selective about possessions.The trade-off is the uniqueness ofthe living experience."And"Finding your cottage is likeGoldilocks finding the chair that is just right.It wraps around you incozy fashion and all seems right with the world."I've givencopies of this book to friends who live elsewhere because it captures notonly the joy of living in one of these cottages but helps all of us, nomatter where we live, gain a better sense of home. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. California    2. Cottages    3. Decorating - General    4. Design & Construction    5. Home Improvement / Construction    6. Interior Design - Style Books    7. Photo Essays    8. Photoessays & Documentaries    9. Photography    10. San Francisco Bay Area    11. Architecture / General   

Reviews (1)

Top Cottage is not quite top form...
Being a lover of all things Roosevelt, I was thrilled to discover that not only is FDR's Top Cottage in Hyde Park open to the public, but that there is now even a book on this fascinating structure.FDR built Top Cottage as an answer to Eleanor's Val-Kill cottage, as a hideaway from the craziness of his mother's "big house" and as a place to retire.Sara Roosevelt was very opposed to this project and is rumored to have made FDR promise he would never spend the night there as long as she was alive.He apparently honored this commitment and never slept there overnight, even though she predeceased him by three years.Read more

Subjects:  1. Architecture / Historic Preservation    2. Design & Construction    3. Home Improvement / Construction    4. (Franklin Delano),    5. 1882-1945    6. Architecture    7. Historic Preservation    8. Roosevelt, Franklin D    9. Top Cottage   

Subjects:  1. 1916-1986    2. Adair County    3. Anecdotes    4. Biography / Autobiography    5. Country life    6. Design and construction    7. General    8. Giles, Henry,    9. History: American    10. Kentucky    11. Log cabins    12. Reference    13. United States - State & Local - General    14. American history    15. USA   

Subjects:  1. Education    2. Education / Teaching    3. Higher    4. History    5. Philosophy & Social Aspects    6. Higher & further education    7. Philosophy of education    8. Social history   

Editorial Review

Although the author opens with a visit to her mother's native Ireland at12 and ends with lighting candles in her new home in County Cork four decadeslater, this is no nostalgic memoir about getting back to your roots. Alice Careyhas crafted a tough-minded examination of her complicated relationship with herheritage, a warm tribute to the theatrical free spirits who helped liberate herfrom an unhappy childhood. She grew up in Queens; her father often hit her andflew into a rage when his wife dared to augment the family's meager finances byworking as a maid for Broadway producer Jed Harris. Helping Mammie in theafternoons, Alice glimpsed a glamorous, sophisticated world beyond theconstraints of Catholic school and Celtic fatalism. She moved to GreenwichVillage in her teens and made her life as a Manhattanite with a weekend home inFire Island. When AIDS decimated that community in the 1990s, she and herhusband moved to Ireland. Making an 18th-century farmhouse habitable is a blackcomedy Carey describes with a sardonic wit that echoes her Irish forebears andgay friends but is uniquely her own (she names "the Seven Dwarves ofRestoration: Happy, Reluctant, Fearful, Suspicious, Wary, Hopeful, andDoubtful"). Her journey towards a new identity as "a real New Yorker living inIreland" is all the more moving because it is chronicled with sharpperceptiveness and without sentimentality. Read more

Reviews (10)

An Easy and Pleasant Read
A friend, whom I accompanied on my first trip to Ireland last May, lent me Alice Carey's memoir "I'll Know It When I See It," knowing how enamored I have become of things Irish. Alice Carey, as a clever and witty story teller, has a natural knack for sizing up situtations and characterizing people that seems to be an Irish trait. Having lived for a while in NYC, I was amused by her reflections on the city, its rapid neighborhood changes, and at the same time dismayed at the stringent life she endured in Queens as a youngster, made especially difficult by a father whose abusive anger was probably rooted in the frustration of economic and social deprivation in a city where extreme wealth so clearly co-exists with poverty.
Returning to Irish Roots
There's something about restoring a house that makes people want to write a book.Perhaps it's the epic nature of their undertaking and the growth they experience in the process.In this account, the house is in Ireland and the restorers are New Yorkers (with Irish roots).Pleasant enough reading, but nothing super-special about it.
Loved It!
What a wonderful, funny, enlightening book.Please Alice Carey - write me another one.My Irish mother would also like to read the next...Bravo! ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Biography    2. Biography & Autobiography    3. Biography / Autobiography    4. Biography/Autobiography    5. Carey, Alice    6. Children of immigrants    7. Conservation and restoration    8. Cork (County)    9. Cottages    10. Europe - Ireland    11. Ireland    12. Irish American women    13. Literary    14. New York    15. New York (State)    16. Personal Memoirs    17. Travelers    18. Women    19. Biography & Autobiography / Literary   

Subjects:  1. Cottage gardens    2. England    3. Flower gardening    4. Garden Design    5. Gardening / Horticulture    6. Gardening/Plants    7. Gardens, Victorian    8. History    9. Landscape    10. Landscape Horticulture    11. Non-Classifiable   

Reviews (1)

Beautiful book
Organized and well researched. Interesting era in Michigan's history. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Historiography    2. History    3. History: American    4. Travel / United States / Midwest / East North Central (IL, IN, MI, OH, WI)    5. Cottages    6. Mackinac Island (Mich.)    7. Michigan    8. Travel    9. Travel - United States    10. United States - Midwest - Michigan   

Reviews (1)

Utterly Fascinating
"Transfoming Modernity" tells the story of the popularization of Mexican culture and crafts.He shows how the desires and tastes of tourists have homogenized traditional Mexican crafts into the few forms favored by tourists (like those associated with death and skulls).He also talks of the folklorization of festivals.Festivals ostensibly in honor of saints have become huge tourist attractions, which have lead to their mutation into little more than a market to sell goods.Very, very interesting and theoretical look at how the global affects the local, and at culture change...something people often talk about but never demonstrate this effectively. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Anthropology - Cultural    2. Artisans    3. Cottage industries    4. Folk art    5. Industries - General    6. Mexico    7. Politics/International Relations    8. Popular culture    9. Sociology    10. Social Science / Anthropology / Cultural   

Reviews (1)

Very nice pictures and fun to read.
I like this book because it gave me several design ideas that I could use in building my home.The pictures were great and it's worth the money! ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Architecture    2. Architecture Of Specific Structures    3. Design & Construction    4. General    5. House & Home    6. House Plans    7. Log cabins    8. United States   

Subjects:  1. Container gardening    2. Gardening    3. Gardening / Horticulture    4. Gardening/Plants    5. House Plants & Indoor    6. Indoor gardening    7. Topiary    8. Topiary work    9. Shrubs & trees    10. Specialized gardening methods   

Features

• Student Edition

Subjects:  1. Arboriculture    2. Gardening/Plants    3. House plants    4. Indoor Gardening    5. Ornamental trees    6. Plants, Ornamental   

Reviews (1)

Great captions
Not only are the photos riveting, but the captions are well-written and informative and the introductory text is positively poetic. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Decoration    2. Decoration & Ornament    3. Home Improvement / Construction    4. Log cabins    5. Photo Essays    6. Photoessays & Documentaries    7. Photography    8. Public, Commercial, or Industrial Buildings    9. United States   

Reviews (1)

an excellent primer for PNW cottage gardening
Schulman starts by explaining the elements of cottage garden design and then goes on to a detailed guide to choosing plants, those traditionally English as well as less traditional but suitable Northwest plants.I could have wished for a few more photographs showing the plants Schulman describes, but overall, this is an invaluable guide for gardeners in the Pacific Northwest who want to try out this time-honored style of gardening. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Cottage gardening    2. Cottage gardens    3. Floriculture    4. Garden Design    5. Gardening    6. Gardening / Horticulture    7. Gardening/Plants    8. Home Gardening    9. Northwest, Pacific    10. Regional - Pacific Northwest (OR, WA)