BiblioVault - Books about Building

Ecopolitics

Building a Green Society

Coleman, Daniel

Rutgers University Press, 1994

Where do you place the blame for the environmental crisis-too many people? consumer greed? technology gone amok? And what do you think will save our planet-birth control? appropriate technology? recycling? eco-consumerism?

Those solutions are just "Band-Aids on a bleeding Earth," argues environmental activist Daniel A. Coleman. Where conventional wisdom sees both the cause of the environmental crisis and its cure in individual actions, Coleman says: Look again. By blaming ourselves as individuals, we let governments and corporations off the hook. Making "50 simple" changes in our personal lifestyles is worthwhile, but must not divert our attention from the underlying causes of environmental disaster. The real causes are rooted deep in the politics of human affairs-and so are their solutions.We should be asking: Why do we allow such harm to our environment? How did we create a society with no stake in the future? How can we build a green society?

The good news is that we can reverse the process of environmental abuse. Political strategies driven by the key values of ecological responsibility, participatory democracy, environmental justice, and community action are effective. Dan Coleman's stories of citizen groups whose grassroots organizing has already put ecologically sound policies in place demonstrate that the sustainable society is indeed possible.

Lucid, lively, probing, serious, yet optimistic-Coleman's analysis is required reading for all who count the earth as their home.

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The Elements of Construction

N. Clifford Ricker, Architecture, and the University of Illinois

N. Clifford Ricker. Edited by Marci S. Uihlein

University of Illinois Press, 2025

A pioneer of architecture education in the United States, N. Clifford Ricker notably taught with an emphasis on construction and shop practice in his teaching. Marci S. Uihlein edits and elaborates on The Elements of Construction, the text on building materials that Ricker wrote and used in his teaching, but never published. The book is a window into the expanding possibilities of the late nineteenth-century, as Ricker continually revised The Elements of Construction to keep up with advances taking place in architecture, materials, and construction technology.

In addition to providing the full text, Uihlein and the contributors trace Ricker’s career and delve into his practice of teaching. Subject experts explore specific topics. Thomas Leslie surveys contemporary construction practices in Chicago. Tom F. Peters considers Ricker’s writings in the context of the time while Rachel Will looks at masonry know-how and testing. Donald Friedman examines the teaching of iron and steel construction.

An illuminating look at a field and a legacy, The Elements of Construction rediscovers a figure that shaped the teaching of architecture and trained a generation that forever changed Chicago.

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Envisioning Freedom

Cinema and the Building of Modern Black Life

Cara Caddoo

Harvard University Press, 2014

Viewing turn-of-the-century African American history through the lens of cinema, Envisioning Freedom examines the forgotten history of early black film exhibition during the era of mass migration and Jim Crow. By embracing the new medium of moving pictures at the turn of the twentieth century, black Americans forged a collective—if fraught—culture of freedom.

In Cara Caddoo’s perspective-changing study, African Americans emerge as pioneers of cinema from the 1890s to the 1920s. Across the South and Midwest, moving pictures presented in churches, lodges, and schools raised money and created shared social experiences for black urban communities. As migrants moved northward, bound for Chicago and New York, cinema moved with them. Along these routes, ministers and reformers, preaching messages of racial uplift, used moving pictures as an enticement to attract followers.

But as it gained popularity, black cinema also became controversial. Facing a losing competition with movie houses, once-supportive ministers denounced the evils of the “colored theater.” Onscreen images sparked arguments over black identity and the meaning of freedom. In 1910, when boxing champion Jack Johnson became the world’s first black movie star, representation in film vaulted to the center of black concerns about racial progress. Black leaders demanded self-representation and an end to cinematic mischaracterizations which, they charged, violated the civil rights of African Americans. In 1915, these ideas both led to the creation of an industry that produced “race films” by and for black audiences and sparked the first mass black protest movement of the twentieth century.

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