Lost in America is about far more than the romance of ruins; it’s about time and what America once was. It’s the Wisconsin Death Trip of our built environment. —Thomas Dyja, author of New York, New York, New York and The Third Coast
Great architecture is timeless—and this book, with its gorgeous photos and engaging text, proves it. American history lives and breathes and soars on these pages. —Jonathan Eig, author of King: A Life and Ali: A Life
Richard Cahan and Michael Williams have proven once again that they are masters in unlocking the stories that can be discovered in photographs. In Lost in America, what might have been an uneventful narrative about an obscure federal agency becomes a fascinating tale of the dynamic tension between America’s push for urban growth and the desire to maintain the legacy of the past. —Robert Bruegmann, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Art History, Architecture and Urban Planning
The Historic American Building Survey is just as weird as it sounds: the last, unlikely collaboration between esthetics and government at the exact moment America was really chewing itself to pieces. The pictures within document the final moments of an era when the outside world most directly reflected the dignity and complexity of the inside one — containing the memories, emotions and lives of generations. If these images don’t move you, then you don’t have a heart.— Chris Ware, author of Building Stories, and editor/designer of “Louis Sullivan’s Idea.”
Lost in America is a major work, an expert mixing of scholarship, striking photography and great storytelling. —Lynn Becker, architecture critic