The Celebration Chronicles: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Property Values in Disney's New Town
by Ross, Andrew
- Used
- Very Good
- Hardcover
- Signed
- first
- Condition
- Very Good/Fine
- ISBN 10
- 0345417518
- ISBN 13
- 9780345417510
- Seller
-
Santa Barbara, California, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
New York: Ballantine Books, 1999. xi, 340 pages, illustrations, maps; 25 cm. PRESENTATION COPY. Signed by the author Andrew Ross, with a personalized inscription. Stated First Edition. Dust jacket protected in a mylar cover. A fine copy of the first printing. "'Planned with impeccably correct intentions, built with improperly low-wage labor, and sold on the basis of improbably lavish guarantees, Celebration would be put to the test time and time again. . . . True to the ethos of the blockbuster box-office hit, would this town deliver on the promise of its business plan or its community plan? Or would it sidestep all expectations and play by a different script?' Scholar and iconoclast Andrew Ross set out to answer these questions by spending a year living in the much scrutinized, and often demonized, Celebration--the picture-perfect town that Disney is building for 20,000 people in the swamp and scrub of central Florida. Lavishly planned with a downtown center and newly-minted antique homes, and front-loaded with an ultra-progressive school, hospital, and high-tech infrastructure, Celebration would be yet another fresh start in a word gone wrong. Yet behind the picket fences, gleaming facades, and 'Kodak moment' streetscapes, Ross discovered genuine, complex, and often surprising truths. In this compelling, eye-opening account, based on his personal encounters and on several hundred hours of interviews with residents, employees, and county locals, Ross records what went right and what went wrong in this latest version of the American Dream. Diverse in background, Celebration's pioneers were united by a desire to escape the cheerless isolation of suburbia and reconnect with the neighbors. They were also dazzled by the Disney brand name and expected much more than they got. The Celebration Chronicles recounts their often unruly struggles to build a community in the face of adversity: shoddy construction, typecasting by the media, Disney's skittishness about negative publicity, and friction with the working-class county of Osceola. An acute observer in the controversial school, Ross takes us to the front lines of a superheated battle of wills between educators and townspeople. What does Celebration reveal about the state of contemporary culture? Is this model town a cause for celebration or alarm? Can we entrust the public interest to giant beneficiaries of the marketplace like Disney? One of our shrewdest social commentators, Ross brilliantly places this planned community within the context of the New Urbanist movement to combat suburban sprawl and restore public life to the nation's increasingly privatized landscape. Powerful, wide-ranging in its analysis, The Celebration Chronicles is a provocative account of the inner life of a new American town. / Andrew Ross is professor and director of the American studies program at New York University. A writer for Artforum, The Nation, The Village Voice, and many other publications, he is the author or editor of ten previous books, including Real Love, The Chicago Gangster Theory of Life, Strange Weather, and No Respect." - Publisher.. SIGNED. 1st. Hardcover. Very Good/Fine. 8vo. Collectible.
Synopsis
Andrew Ross is professor and director of the American studies program at New York University. A writer for Artforum, The Nation, The Village Voice, and many other publications, he is the author or editor of ten previous books, including Real Love, The Chicago Gangster Theory of Life, Strange Weather, and No Respect. From the Hardcover edition.
Reviews
(Log in or Create an Account first!)
Details
- Bookseller
- LEFT COAST BOOKS (US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 105529
- Title
- The Celebration Chronicles: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Property Values in Disney's New Town
- Author
- Ross, Andrew
- Format/Binding
- Hardcover
- Book Condition
- Used - Very Good
- Jacket Condition
- Fine
- Edition
- 1st
- ISBN 10
- 0345417518
- ISBN 13
- 9780345417510
- Publisher
- Ballantine Books
- Place of Publication
- New York
- Date Published
- 1999
- Size
- 8vo
- Keywords
- COLLECTIBLE
- Bookseller catalogs
- XXX / COLLECTIBLES; Architecture / Urbanism, Cities & City Planning;
Terms of Sale
LEFT COAST BOOKS
30 day return guarantee, with full refund including original shipping costs for up to 30 days after delivery if an item arrives misdescribed or damaged.
About the Seller
LEFT COAST BOOKS
Biblio member since 2016
Santa Barbara, California
About LEFT COAST BOOKS
Established in Santa Barbara, California, in 2004, Left Coast Books specializes in ART BOOKS, offering thousands of titles on painting, sculpture, graphic arts, architecture, design, photography, film, video, and performance art. We also sell classics, literature, history, and a broad variety of useful academic books.
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Fine
- A book in fine condition exhibits no flaws. A fine condition book closely approaches As New condition, but may lack the...
- First Edition
- In book collecting, the first edition is the earliest published form of a book. A book may have more than one first edition in...
- Jacket
- Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...