No Vacancy

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No Vacancy BookNo Vacancy: The Rise, Demise, and Reprise of America’s MotelsBy Mark Okrant, illustrations by Laura Hodgdon
Concord, New Hampshire: Plaidswede Publishing, 2013
138 pages, illus., $15.95 paper

Keith A. Sculle

Author Mark Okrant has launched readers on another nostalgic journey where small roadside lodgings serviced travelers overnight. In the introduction, he states of this book and its predecessor, Sleeping Alongside the Road (2006) they offer “a nostalgic look at the American motel, an American icon that is indelibly etched in the memories of nearly half of all Americans age forty and older” (p. ix).

Lakefront Anonymous, Chicago’s Unknown Art Gallery

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Lakefront Anonymous, Chicago’s Unknown Art Gallery
By William Swislow (text and photographs) and Aron Packer (photographs)
Chicago: Interestingideas.com, 2021
Softcover, 160 pages, $40

Reviewed by Joseph Marlin

Who would have thought there would be a book about graffiti and vernacular stone carvings on Chicago’s lakefront? Not I, and I live here! But William Swislow, an SCA board member, has spent three decades photographing and documenting these works typically created by untrained, anonymous carvers.

Neon: A Light History

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Neon: A Light History
By Dydia DeLyser and Paul Greenstein
San Francisco: Giant Orange Press, 2021
Softcover, 88 pages, $25

Reviewed by Douglas C. Towne

There’s a new book on neon signs that excels at, in the authors’ words, bringing “the light of the past into the present.” The cleverly titled Neon: A Light History beautifully and meticulously illuminates the evolution of this electrifying advertising medium. But that’s only the start. The text goes a step further and connects neon signs with the larger economic and societal forces that impacted them, placing them in the crux of American history.