When Paradise Planned arrived at my home—all 1,072 extra-thick high-gloss pages—my first instinct was to set the volume down on its own half-acre lot, give it a peaked roof, and simply move in. Instead, I rushed to the gym and spent a few days building up the biceps needed to lift the thing. Then, awed by the sheer cumulative industry of writing triumvirate Robert A.M. Stern, David Fishman, and Jacob Tilove, I lowered their exhaustive survey of the garden suburb onto my insufficient lap and started to read. I made it through by being selective, in much the same way some people flip past the threshing scenes in Anna Karenina to get to the main plot. If you quizzed me on Swedish bedroom communities in the early twentieth century, I might get a little vague. I know where to look it up, though.
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