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Clay, Grady.  Close-Up: How to Read the American City.  Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1973 and 1980.  192 p.  Many black and white photographs and maps.  Notes, Sources of Illustrations, and Index sections.

In Close-Up, urban observer and commentator, Grady Clay, takes an unconventional approach to reading and interpreting the man-made American cultural landscape.  Clay served as the editor of Landscape Architecture Magazine from 1960 to 1984 and was a longtime urban affairs specialist for the Louisville Courier Journal.  The premise of this book is that there are no secrets in our everyday landscape, only undisclosed evidence waiting to be unturned and compiled.  In this work, Clay provides the reader with short cuts, mental games, and various analytical tools, which can be applied to the ordinary landscape.  He advocates moving away from elitist architectural terminology and proposes a new language for describing landscape components such as fixes, epitome districts, fronts, strips, beats, stacks, sinks, and vantages.  Originally written in 1972 and republished in 1980, this book is somewhat dated in the sense that the landscape, culture, and attitudes that Clay studied twenty years ago have changed a great deal.  For instance, today retail commercial strips feature superstores, environmental concerns often influence development, and the computer super highway is as important as major interstates.  Given these changes, Close-Up warrants close reading by anyone interested in gaining a better understanding of the ordinary landscape most people continue to take for granted. [J. Kille]