The definitive work on a formative period in American landscape design. In this lavishly illustrated volume, Robin Karson traces the development of a distinctly American style of landscape design through an analysis of seven country places created by some of the nation"s most talented landscape practitioners. In the mid-nineteenth century Frederick Law Olmsted, the designer of New York"s Central Park, developed an approach to landscape design based on the principles of the English Picturesque which also emphasized a specifically American experience of nature and scenery. After Olmsted"s retirement in 1897, these precepts continued to ground a new generation of American landscape architects through the next four decades, a period known as the country place era, a time of rapid economic, social, and cultural change. In the early twentieth century, new fortunes made it possible for wealthy Americans to commission country estates as a means of aggrandizing social status....