Selling the dwelling

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Published to accompany the exhibition "Selling the The Books That Built America's Houses, 1775-2000," on show at the Grolier Club December 11, 2013-February 7, 2014. The evolution of the house design book in the United States is a long and complicated story, filled with architectural creativity and banality, commercial genius and excess, egalitarian and humanitarian ideals, literary and social ambition, can-do individualism, faith in progress and invention, and endless energy. All of these quintessential American traits are bound within the pages of the builder's guides, pattern books, catalogues, and other forms of architectural literature that have competed for the financial and psychological rewards involved in designing and building a domestic haven for every citizen. In this illustrated survey - the first of its kind to showcase the enormous variety and graphic appeal of these materials - Richard Cheek highlights the more visually arresting and socially compelling exampl