Book description
The COVID-19 pandemic has re-ignited discussions of how architects, landscapes, and urban planners can shape the environment in response to disease. This challenge is both a timely topic and one with an illuminating history. In The Topography of Wellness, Sara Jensen Carr offers a chronological narrative of how six epidemicsā¦
Why read it?
1 author picked The Topography of Wellness as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
For several years, Iāve been teaching a course called the American Way of Death, and Sara Jensen Carrās The Topography of Wellness features prominently on my syllabus.
Carr explores how soaring mortality rates in the nineteenth century, mostly from diseases like cholera and tuberculosis, prompted an army of public health reformers, urban planners, and municipal leaders to tackle the toxic urban landscape by envisioning and creating a new landscape with the kinds of infrastructure that today we take for granted. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the new and improved city, with its public water and sewer systems andā¦
From Dean's list on The best books on the hidden power of space and place to shape our lives.
If you love The Topography of Wellness...
December on 5C4
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa storiesāall reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argueā¦
Want books like The Topography of Wellness?
Our community of 13,000+ authors has personally recommended 100 books like The Topography of Wellness.
Share your top 3 reads of 2026!
And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.
186
readers submitted
so far, will you?
š If you like The Topography of Wellness, you might also like...
Child of Vanris
At five years old, Kasiel was found with the pointed ends of his ears cut off. Despite that brutal start, heās lived twelve peaceful years with the man who took him in. Keeping his hair long over his mutilated ears helps him hide the fact that he is Vanrian, aā¦
Almost Home
Almost Home is a fictional retelling of the last great tragedy of the Civil War.
In late April 1865, almost 2,000 newly freed Union prisoners of war are packed onto the steamer Sultana, in poor repair and with a listed capacity of 376 passengers.Ā Among them are four Indiana soldiersā¦
