Meet Me by the Fountain

Author Alexandra Lange
Narrator Mikhaila Aaseng
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing
Run Time 9 hours and 49 minutes
Format Audio
Genre History of design, The Arts.

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What to expect

Longlisted for the Porchlight Business Book Awards

“A smart and accessible cultural history.” —Los Angeles Times

“A fantastic examination of what became the mall . . . envision[ing] a more meaningful public afterlife for our shopping centers.”—Vulture

A portrait—by turns celebratory, skeptical, and surprisingly moving—of one of America’s most iconic institutions, from an author who “might be the most influential design critic writing now” (LARB).

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.

Critics Review

A smart and accessible cultural history—outlining the social, economic and architectural forces that led to the creation of U.S. malls as we know them … Lange doesn’t have a false nostalgia for malls. Meet Me by the Fountain is frank about how they have usurped public space. But at a time when malls still serve the function of bringing us together, Lange’s book is a thoughtful guide to helping them do what the best of them already have—but better.
Los Angeles Times
Artfully elucidates the 70-year history of the mall … Lange asserts that malls, as ‘blank boxes in the middle of the big empty parking lots,’ can ‘serve as a land trust’ for the 21st century. This sounds like a stretch, but it proves to be true. Some malls die, but most don’t…Ms. Lange’s elegant conclusion: The mall is dead; long live the mall.
Wall Street Journal
A fantastic examination of what became the mall … envision[ing] a more meaningful public afterlife for our shopping centers.
Vulture
Shines in its study of malls as symbols, and drivers, of American consumerism and urban sprawl …Though Ms Lange pays rapt attention to malls’ shortcomings, her book is refreshingly optimistic.
The Economist
Reminds us that the mall has helped shape American society, and has evolved with our country since the 1950s … [Lange] posits that there’s still a place for malls in our society, as long as they adapt to better serve their communities.
The Atlantic
Fascinating cultural history.
Christian Science Monitor, 10 Best Books of June
A well-researched introduction to the rise and fall and dicey future of an American institution.
New York Times
An insightful look at the design of both objects and public spaces.
InsideHook
One of our best design writers traces the influence of Waukegan’s Genesse Street, “Dawn of the Dead” and department stores on now-struggling suburban sprawls saddled with acres of parking.
Chicago Tribune
Dives into the storied, almost nostalgic, past of the American mall and makes a case that, no, malls aren’t dying—they’re just changing with the times.
Fast Company
Lively, deeply researched, and ultimately optimistic.
The Architect's Newspaper
Reading this book is like looking in the nooks, crannies, and hidden hallways of your local shopping emporium with a critical eye. It’s a hark back to your childhood in the most intriguing way.
The Bookworm Sez
This thorough, culturally aware history will surprise and inspire audiences who may feel they already know the story of the shopping megaplex … Despite malls’ sometimes problematic past, Lange envisions an inspiring, community-oriented repurposing of these monuments to consumerism.
Shelf Awareness Pro
A deeply researched history … The mall is dead—but it may yet live again, as Lange’s instructive book capably shows.
Kirkus Reviews
A thought-provoking cultural history … Lucid and well researched, this is an insightful study of an overlooked and undervalued architectural form.
Publishers Weekly
In this spry architectural history, Lange tracks the American shopping mall’s postwar origins, evolution during the second half of the twentieth century, and twenty-first-century collapse and future possibility … invite[s] readers to map their own mall experiences onto the chronologically organized accounts of architects, developers, and specific sites that follow.
Booklist
Just as Lange reflects on the joy she found at the local North Carolina mall of her childhood, many readers will likely reminisce about the malls where they once shopped or worked or simply hung out. But Lange eschews nostalgia in favor of bold ideas that focus on community and sustainability.
Christian Science Monitor
It is hard to imagine a more complete social, architectural, cultural, economic or cross-national comparison of shopping malls than this book provides.
Inside Higher Ed
Chronicling the architecture of the mall in an entertaining and accessible account, Lange reveals how design formed this everlasting cultural symbol of the so-called American Dream.
Metropolis Magazine
Design is the leitmotif that knits the narrative in Meet Me by the Fountain together, but the breadth of Lange’s analysis gives it deeper meaning … Engrossing and accessible reading.
Azure Magazine
Easy-to-digest information about malls, their nostalgic appeal, and fabled history … the perfect book to add to your library.
Archinect
[A] contradiction sits at the center of Lange’s book: The mall is beautiful and soothing, but its pursuit of profit steers it away from truly serving us … What might bloom in the husks of dead or dying malls might not be squalor, Lange writes, but opportunity. Rather than tear them down, she argues, let’s reimagine their use of public space.
The Nation
Mixing firsthand reporting and historical research, Lange traces the history of malls, from coast to coast, to show us not just how malls have changed, but how they’ve also changed us.
Fast Company, Best Design Books of 2022
An architectural page-turner. This insightful, witty, and smart book captures everything compelling and confounding about the American mall.
Roman Mars, co-author of THE 99% INVISIBLE CITY
A mall is not just a mall in this fascinating, far-reaching history. Alexandra Lange nimbly navigates sweeping changes in American society, explaining so much more than how and where we shop, and—much like the architectural institution at the book’s center—providing plenty of fun along the way.
Julia Cooke, author of COME FLY THE WORLD
Alexandra Lange is the poet laureate of mall culture, and her book is as delightful as a cold Orange Julius. Deeply researched and full of fascinating insights.
Rachel Syme, staff writer, The New Yorker
The shopping mall is an American tragedy but also a triumph. This book shows both its sides with generosity and tenderness.
Ian Bogost, author of PLAY ANYTHING
Brilliantly explores how these places we thought were just churches built for worshipping at the altar of capitalism actually represent everything we are, aren’t, want to be, and never knew we could have been.
Jason Diamond, author of THE SPRAWL

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Meet Me by the Fountain

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