A Clearing in the Distance

In a brilliant collaboration between writer and subject, the bestselling author of "Home" and "City Life" illuminates Frederick Law Olmsted's role as a major cultural figure and a man at the epicenter of nineteenth-century American history. We know Olmsted through the physical legacy of his stunning landscapes - among them, New York's Central Park, California's Stanford University campus, Boston's Back Bay Fens, Illinois's Riverside community, Asheville's Biltmore Estate, and Louisville's park system. He was a landscape architect before that profession was founded, designed the first large suburban community in the United States, foresaw the need for national parks, and devised one of the country's first regional plans.