James Holston
The Modernist City: An Anthropological Critique of Brasilia.
The University of Chicago Press, 1989. Second printing. 0226349799 xiv/369 pages.
Softcover volume, measuring approximately 7" x 9.75", displays lightly bumped bottom inside corner. Book is otherwise in fine condition, with solid binding, clean and bright pages.
"The utopian design and organization of Brasília—the modernist new capital of Brazil—were meant to transform Brazilian society. In this sophisticated, pioneering study of Brasília from its inception in 1957 to the present, James Holston analyzes this attempt to change society by building a new kind of city and the ways in which the paradoxes of constructing an imagined future subvert its utopian premises. Integrating anthropology with methods of analysis from architecture, urban studies, social history, and critical theory, Holston presents a critique of modernism based on a powerfully innovative ethnography of the city."