The Unknown World Of The Mobile Home

In American popular imagination, the mobile home evokes images of cramped interiors, cheap materials, and occupants too poor or unsavory to live anywhere else. Since the 1940s and '50s, however, mobile home manufacturers have improved standards of construction and now present them as an affordable alternative to conventional site-built homes. Today one of every fourteen Americans lives in a mobile home. In The Unknown World of the Mobile Home authors John Fraser Hart, Michelle J. Rhodes, and John T. Morgan illuminate the history and culture of these often misunderstood domiciles. They describe early mobile homes, which were trailers designed to be pulled behind automobiles and which were more often than not poorly constructed and unequal to the needs of those who used them. During the 1970s, however, Congress enacted federal standards for the quality and safety of mobile homes, which led to innovation in design and the production of much more attractive and durable models. These models now comply with local building codes and many are designed to look like conventional houses. As a result, one out every five new single-family housing units purchased in the United States is a mobile home, sited everywhere from the conventional trailer park to custom-designed "estates" aimed at young couples and retirees. Despite all these changes in manufacture and design, even the most immobile mobile homes are still sold, financed, regulated, and taxed as vehicles. With a wealth of detail and illustrations, The Unknown World of the Mobile Home provides readers with an in-depth look into this variation on the American dream. -- Karl Raitz, University of Kentucky, author of The National Road

In American popular imagination, the mobile home evokes images of cramped interiors, cheap materials, and occupants too poor or unsavory to live anywhere else. Since the 1940s and '50s, however, mobile home manufacturers have improved standards of construction and now present them as an affordable alternative to conventional site-built homes. Today one of every fourteen Americans lives in a mobile home. In The Unknown World of the Mobile Home authors John Fraser Hart, Michelle J. Rhodes, and John T. Morgan illuminate the history and culture of these often misunderstood domiciles. They describe early mobile homes, which were trailers designed to be pulled behind automobiles and which were more often than not poorly constructed and unequal to the needs of those who used them. During the 1970s, however, Congress enacted federal standards for the quality and safety of mobile homes, which led to innovation in design and the production of much more attractive and durable models. These models now comply with local building codes and many are designed to look like conventional houses. As a result, one out every five new single-family housing units purchased in the United States is a mobile home, sited everywhere from the conventional trailer park to custom-designed "estates" aimed at young couples and retirees. Despite all these changes in manufacture and design, even the most immobile mobile homes are still sold, financed, regulated, and taxed as vehicles. With a wealth of detail and illustrations, The Unknown World of the Mobile Home provides readers with an in-depth look into this variation on the American dream. -- Karl Raitz, University of Kentucky, author of The National Road

John Fraser Hart is one of America's best known geographers and his prolific writings about the land and its variegated character are elegant and informed. In A Love of the Land, geographer John C. Hudson has gathered a collection of Hart's seminal essays from the last fifty years, which have received wide literary and scholarly acclaim. The thirteen essays collected in this volume reveal the rich breadth of Hart's work. In these pieces, Hart meditates on the meaning of geographical study, suburban sprawl, the contemporary uses of land and space, and changes wrought on rural landscapes by the modernization of farms and the growth of industrial agriculture. Whether sheep farming in the British moorlands, the history of the Cotton Belt in the American South, or the industrialization of livestock production, Hart vividly narrates the age-old story of humans and their deep ties to the land, as he deftly blends facts and analysis with engaging anecdotes of his and others' experiences. A Love of the Land will be essential reading not only for geography students and scholars but also for those interested in how geography and place impacts our lives.

This book guides the reader through recent and established theories as well as introducing a number of previously neglected themes, films and texts.