Untimely Ruins: An Archaeology of American Urban Modernity, 1819-1919
"Untimely Ruins is a magisterial work of scholarship, brimming with intelligence, insight, and interest on every page. Nick Yablon's scholarship is prodigious. His extended meditation on the meanings of American ruins explains why they are distinctive, what they reveal, and how they matter. This is a book of exceptional historical expanse and interpretive ambition that is at the same time remarkably lucid from sentence to sentence, paragraph to paragraph, and page to page." - Carl Smith, author of The Plan of Chicago: Daniel Burnham and the Remaking of the American City"