The Geography of Nowhere Audiobook By James Howard Kunstler cover art

The Geography of Nowhere

The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape

 Preview
LIMITED TIME OFFER

3 months free
Try for $0.00
Offer ends July 31, 2025 at 11:59PM PT.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 3 months. Cancel anytime.

The Geography of Nowhere

By: James Howard Kunstler
Narrated by: Al Kessel
Try for $0.00

$0.00/mo. after 3 months. Offer ends July 31, 2025 at 11:59PM PT. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $21.49

Buy for $21.49

Confirm purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use, License, and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
Cancel

In elegant and often hilarious prose, Kunstler depicts our nation's evolution from the Pilgrim settlements to the modern auto suburb in all its ghastliness. The Geography of Nowhere tallies up the huge economic, social, and spiritual costs that America is paying for its car-crazed lifestyle. It is also a wake-up call for citizens to reinvent the places where we live and work, to build communities that are once again worthy of our affection. Kunstler proposes that by reviving civic art and civic life, we will rediscover public virtue and a new vision of the common good. "The future will require us to build better places," Kunstler says, "or the future will belong to other people in other societies."

The Geography of Nowhere has become a touchstone work in the two decades since its initial publication, its incisive commentary giving language to the feeling of millions of Americans that our nation's suburban environments were ceasing to be credible human habitats. Since that time, the work has inspired city planners, architects, legislators, designers, and citizens everywhere.

©1993, 2016 James Howard Kunstler (P)2019 Tantor Architecture Social Sciences Urban Planning
Informative History • Great Writing Style • Okay Narration • Influential Content • Insightful Perspective
Highly rated for:
All stars
Most relevant  
While JHK’s predictions for oil supply collapse has yet to occur, his analysis of what is wrong with the built environment in America remains spot on. This should be required reading for every planning student and city elected official.

Timeless and Prescient

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
the book is great. the narrator has weird punctuation, stopping in the middle of a sentence for no reason. very irritating.

narrator. adds full stops. for no reason.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi” drawn out into a darkly funny rant about American civic development.

Narrator sounds like a bitter Rod Serling doing an infomercial. It was a strong choice and distracting. But ultimately added to the hilarity. An interesting story.

Well-researched rant

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A careful, painstakingly detailed log of our freeway to nowhere. Beautiful. More words are not required to compliment this labour of love.

The ugly result

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I liked the subject matter and the author did a great job; the research seemed very thorough and was presented in a way that was easy to follow. However a lot of the imagery would have benefited from concrete visuals to truly drive the authors point home in a way that manages to keep the listener engaged. TLDR: too lengthy for a listen.

Would be much better as a documentary series

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The book tells the story of how we got to this wasteful ugly built environment and what we can do to improve it.

More timely than when written

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
While this book was well researched, Kunstler does not take into account population growth since WW2. We can’t fit nearly 8 billion people into small towns. Still, it made me think about the cost of suburban neighborhoods, and made me a little depressed. The narrator sounded like he was merely pronouncing the individual words and not actually paying attention to the content, resulting in a choppy, disjointed, channel 5 news talking head style that was not pleasant to hear for 12 hours.

Suburbia Jeremiad with poor narration

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A realistc presentation of the sad and depressing state of America's aesthetic but read in the tone of a children's bedtime story. A gritty story read with a happy sounding voice diminished the severity of the circumstances we are in.

Happy Car Armageddon

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A review requires at least 15 words

If it is less than this

Your voice means nothing

A review requires at least 15 words

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Very in-depth and Extremely well researched and explained. Narrator a little sing-song-y but okay. I wish there was more info on what one can do to change this trajectory of development but it gives great examples of who’s doing it right and well

Excellent whole view on why we develop our towns and cities so poorly

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews