Meet Me by the Fountain

  I received a copy of this release from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Title: Meet Me by the Fountain

Author: Alexandra Lange 

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Release Date: 6.14.22

Publisher’s Summary 

Few places have been as nostalgized, or as maligned, as malls. Since their birth in the 1950s, they have loomed large as temples of commerce, the agora of the suburbs. In their prime, they proved a powerful draw for creative thinkers such as Joan Didion, Ray Bradbury, and George Romero, who understood the mall's appeal as both critics and consumers. Yet today, amid the aftershocks of financial crises and a global pandemic, as well as the rise of online retail, the dystopian husk of an abandoned shopping center has become one of our era's defining images. Conventional wisdom holds that the mall is dead. But what was the mall, really? And have rumors of its demise been greatly exaggerated?

In her acclaimed The Design of Childhood, Alexandra Lange uncovered the histories of toys, classrooms, and playgrounds. She now turns her sharp eye to another subject we only think we know. She chronicles postwar architects' and merchants' invention of the mall, revealing how the design of these marketplaces played an integral role in their cultural ascent. In Lange's perceptive account, the mall becomes newly strange and rich with contradiction: Malls are environments of both freedom and exclusion--of consumerism, but also of community. Meet Me by the Fountain is a highly entertaining and evocative promenade through the mall's story of rise, fall, and ongoing reinvention, for readers of any generation.

My Review

If someone made a film of my life, several scenes would be set at a mall. Growing up, it was a big deal to go to "town" to go to the local shopping mall, and a couple times a year my mom and I would set out to go to one of the bigger malls about an hour away. My mom worked at a mall when I was young. I worked at malls while I was pregnant and when my girls were young. I am nostalgic for the magical hold a mall had on me as a teen and I have PTSD from working too many Christmas holidays in retail management. Now, when I go to a mall, I cringe with the obvious signs of its gradual demise. 

In Meet Me by the Fountain, architecture critic Alexandra Lange (PhD in 20th-century architecture history) takes readers on a deep dive into architectural firms, urban politics, and consumer trends. Peeling back the layers to everything you thought you knew or felt about malls and mall culture, Lange gives an unbiased account of the life of the American shopping mall. 

Table of Contents:

Intro: Why We Go to the Mall

1. Every Day Will Be the Perfect Shopping Day

2. The Garden

3. The Mall and the Public

4. Make Shopping Beside the Point

5. Whose Mall is It Anyway?

6. Dawn of the Dead Mall

7. The Postapocalyptic Mall 

Conclusion: The Mall Abroad