The mystery that attracts Howard Mansfield's attention is that some houses have lifeare home, are dwellings, and others aren't. Dwelling, he says, is an old-fashioned word that we've misplaced. When we live heart and soul, we dwell. When we belong to a place, we dwell. Possession, they say, is nine-tenths of the law, but it is also what too many houses and towns lack. We are not possessed by our home places. This lost quality of dwellingthe soul of buildingshaunts most of our houses and our landscape. Dwelling in Possibility is a search for the ordinary qualities that make some houses a home, and some public places welcoming. Table of Contents Introduction: House Hunting Dwelling in the Ordinary Pages From an Ice Storm Journal The Age of Clutter Finding Heaven in the Most Hated House on the Block The Perilous Career of a Footpath Dwelling in Destruction The Hut on Fire Keep the Home Fires Burning The Storm After The Storm Dwelling in Possibility Counting Houses Sheds The Beginner's Book of Dwelling Bibliography Acknowledgments

Dwelling in Possibility: Searching for the Soul of Shelter

Politics & Social Sciences

Mansfield, Howard

Social Sciences

Bauhan Publishing

"A shed is the shortest line between need and shelter," writes Howard Mansfield. Drawing on material from his recent book Dwelling in Possibility, Mansfield explores the different types of sheds found around New England and beyond:covered bridges, barns, worksheds, "worship sheds" (meeting houses), extended farmhouses, bob houses for ice fishing. In lyrical style and supported by photographs by Joanna Eldredge Morrissey, Mansfield shows the connection between the design of these structures and their roles in our lives. "Sheds are like our lives--not the grandest building or the most graceful. Sheds are ordinary -- and in that they are exalted."

Sheds

Arts & Photography

Photography & Video

"Whenever Howard Mansfield writes about the world around him, whether it be small-town New England, or what compels us to preserve the artifacts of our lives, or the mystery of Time, I pay attention."--Mel Allen, editor, Yankee magazine Howard Mansfield's new book, Summer Over Autumn: A Small Book of Small-Town Life is named for what Mansfield calls the moment in late summer when the season is still going strong but you get that first glimpse at autumn. "There's a moment every summer when I look up at a nearby mountain and see a weakening of the green, and here and there like a splattering of paint, the first yellow leaves," writes Mansfield. "Autumn is beginning to slip out from undercover. I think of this moment as its own distinct time, as Summer Over Autumn. This is the moment that precedes the fall snap, the great colors, and the final bare season in November."Mansfield's new book is about such moments. Summer Over Autumn is a small book of small-town life. He has written twenty-one short essays over the last thirty years, stories about neighbors, animals, tractors, trees, yard sales, funerals, money, and fidelity to time itself. It's a book about the crooked path that is New Hampshire, about the parts that are postcard pretty, and the rougher parts that have a kind of hidden grace you have to live with to really see.He doesn't waste time with the "quaint postcard" view of a New England town, but shows readers where the real merit of small-town life lies. It can be found in the war waged against invasive, wild rosebushes, the hopeful placing of bets in the elm tree lottery, the artful dance of fundraising, and in bribing the band to play longer at the mechanic's anniversary party. He brings us the hidden stories in one chair, a conversation in passing, or a Fourth of July fireworks display. Like Hancock's crooked Main Street, the town and these stories are not just there for reminiscing; they are a "breathing lesson."Howard Mansfield is an everyday tourist and detective of the nearby. His ability to fully immerse himself in the here rather than rushing on towards there, has helped him create the wonderful essays in this small book full of big ideas.

Summer Over Autumn: A Small Book of Small-Town Life

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

While reporting on citizens fighting natural gas pipelines and transmission lines planned to cut right across their homes, Howard Mansfield saw the emotional toll of these projects. “They got under the skin,” writes Mansfield. “This was about more than kilowatts, powerlines, and pipelines. Something in this upheaval felt familiar. I began to realize that I was witnessing an essential American experience: the world turned upside down. And it all turned on one word: property.”

The Habit of Turning the World Upside Down: Our Belief in Property and the Cost of That Belief

Business & Money

Economics

Chasing Eden is about seekers, Americans searching for their Eden, longing for a Promised Land, a utopia somewhere out on the horizon. With his usual deep perception, humor, and grace, Howard Mansfield writes about “a small gathering of Americans” united by longing and devotion in their search for something perfect here on earth, a goal that is ever receding. Mansfield illuminates how this longing—for God, for freedom, for peace—can be found in every era, and gives form and force to our lives in our pursuit of happiness—“the primary occupation of every American.”\nFrom the Back Cover\nIn this remarkable book, Howard Mansfield re-mystifies the cold, hard 
land of the American northeast. He unearths parades of seekers-- 
Shakers who love God and TV, divorced men who haunt the hiking huts 
of Mount Washington, Pocumtucks who paddle downstream to offer a 
mercy that will go unreturned. His prose is at turns arresting with its 
poignancy and laugh-out-loud funny. It's good to go on this jaunt with 
him. He has a knack for spotting the wild characters that lead us into the 
electric realm between memory and hope. 
--Lulu Miller, author of Why Fish Don't Exist 
and co-host of Radiolab 
Many of us are content to lead our lives unconcerned with the big 
questions our short time on this earth constantly pose. This book 
focuses on those who do search--relentlessly--for meaning. 
--Ken Burns, documentary filmmaker 
Howard Mansfield journeys into stories in the same way one sets out 
to climb a mountain: with care and preparation. He is the most 
insightful of historians and journalists, and there are stories here, and 
reflections, that will leave you gobsmacked as to how you could have 
gone this long without hearing them, and holding them dear. The Eden 
that Mansfield is chasing is less a place than a promise--but no matter, 
Chasing Eden is necessary reading for anyone with a mind, a heart, and 
a conscience. 
--J.C. Hallman, author of In Utopia: Six Kinds of Eden 
and the Search for a Better Paradise

Chasing Eden: A Book of Seekers

History

Americas

Skylark:The Life, Lies and Inventions of Harry Atwood is the story of one of the greatpioneers in American aviation chasing the dream of flight. Harry Atwood was aWright Brothers-trained aviator, inventor and con man, a headline hero whofascinated the media for three decades and died in obscurity in Hanging Dog,North Carolina in the days before the moon landing.

Skylark: The Life, Lies, and Inventions of Harry Atwood

Professionals & Academics

Univ Pr of New England

The twentieth century saw a grand procession of promises for the city. The great modern architect Le Corbusier dictated cities of glittering white towers planted in green parks, Frank Lloyd proposed cities with no downtown, cities spread across the countryside with each family on its homestead, and skyscraper utopians of the 1920s promised paradise on the one-hundredth floor with our airplane hangared next door. One thing was sure: the city of tomorrow would put to shame the city of yesterday. Another thing was certain, too: we would be happier, more peaceful (and productive) people. Here is Le Corbusier: "Free, man tends to geometry." And if we followed the "radiant harmony" of his geometry, the world’s cities could become "irresistible forces stimulating collective enthusiasm, collective action, and general joy and pride, and inconsequence individual happiness everywhere . . . the modern world would emerge . . . and would beam around, powerful, happy, believing." There were others who promised deliverance through their brands of architecture: the right angle, the curvilinear road in the park, the tower of glass. Each fervently preached that his was the magic geometry that, like tumblers on a lock, would open the way to the good life. Cosmopolis is a pattern book of expectations, generously illustrated with a gathering of plans from the City Beautiful to the Italian Futurists, The Cité Industrielle, World’s Fair utopias, science fiction visions, and the grand plans of the Moderns. Cosmopolis is the story of the ideal city we never achieved, and the great plans that went into making-over precincts of our urban language.

Cosmopolis: Yesterday's Cities of the Future

Rutgers Univ Center for Urban

Before Thomas Edison, light and fire were thought to be one and the same. Turns out, they were separate things altogether. This book takes a similar relationship, that of time and place, and shows how they, too, were once inseparable. Time keeping was once a local affair, when small towns set their own pace according to the rising and setting of the sun. Then, in 1883, the expanding railroads necessitated the creation of Standard Time zones, and communities became linked by a universal time. Here Howard Mansfield explores how our sudden interconnectedness, both physically, as through the railroad, and through inventions like the telegraph, changed our concept of time and place forever.

Turn and Jump: How Time & Place Fell Apart

Historical Study & Educational Resources

Down East Books

The twentieth century saw a grand procession of promises for the city. The great modern architect Le Corbusier dictated cities of glittering white towers planted in green parks, Frank Lloyd proposed cities with no downtown, cities spread across the countryside with each family on its homestead, and skyscraper utopians of the 1920s promised paradise on the one-hundredth floor with our airplane hangared next door.One thing was sure: the city of tomorrow would put to shame the city of yesterday. Another thing was certain, too: we would be happier, more peaceful (and productive) people. Here is Le Corbusier: "Free, man tends to geometry." And if we followed the "radiant harmony" of his geometry, the world's cities could become "irresistible forces stimulating collective enthusiasm, collective action, and general joy and pride, and inconsequence individual happiness everywhere . . . the modern world would emerge . . . and would beam around, powerful, happy, believing."There were others who promised deliverance through their brands of architecture: the right angle, the curvilinear road in the park, the tower of glass. Each fervently preached that his was the magic geometry that, like tumblers on a lock, would open the way to the good life. Cosmopolis is a pattern book of expectations, generously illustrated with a gathering of plans from the City Beautiful to the Italian Futurists, The Cité Industrielle, World's Fair utopias, science fiction visions, and the grand plans of the Moderns. Cosmopolis is the story of the ideal city we never achieved, and the great plans that went into making-over precincts of our urban language.

Routledge

The twentieth century saw a grand procession of promises for the city. The great modern architect Le Corbusier dictated cities of glittering white towers planted in green parks, Frank Lloyd proposed cities with no downtown, cities spread across the countryside with each family on its homestead, and skyscraper utopians of the 1920s promised paradise on the one-hundredth floor with our airplane hangared next door.
One thing was sure: the city of tomorrow would put to shame the city of yesterday. Another thing was certain, too: we would be happier, more peaceful (and productive) people. Here is Le Corbusier: "Free, man tends to geometry." And if we followed the "radiant harmony" of his geometry, the world’s cities could become "irresistible forces stimulating collective enthusiasm, collective action, and general joy and pride, and inconsequence individual happiness everywhere . . . the modern world would emerge . . . and would beam around, powerful, happy, believing."
There were others who promised deliverance through their brands of architecture: the right angle, the curvilinear road in the park, the tower of glass. Each fervently preached that his was the magic geometry that, like tumblers on a lock, would open the way to the good life. Cosmopolis is a pattern book of expectations, generously illustrated with a gathering of plans from the City Beautiful to the Italian Futurists, The Cité Industrielle, World’s Fair utopias, science fiction visions, and the grand plans of the Moderns. Cosmopolis is the story of the ideal city we never achieved, and the great plans that went into making-over precincts of our urban language.

Cosmopolis

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Mansfield, Howard. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Mansfield, Howard

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Mansfield, Howard. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Dwelling in Possibility: Searching for the Soul of Shelter

Sheds

Summer Over Autumn: A Small Book of Small-Town Life

The Habit of Turning the World Upside Down: Our Belief in Property and the Cost of That Belief

Chasing Eden: A Book of Seekers

Skylark: The Life, Lies, and Inventions of Harry Atwood

Cosmopolis: Yesterday's Cities of the Future

Turn and Jump: How Time & Place Fell Apart

Cosmopolis: Yesterday's Cities of the Future

Cosmopolis