198 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE head of a team in charge of a multiplicity of details to be resolved before—not after—problems occur? Skyscraper is packed not only with details of potential financial crises and daily obstacles to be overcome but also with evidence of design blunders. One would think that a building of this magnitude should be designed well enough that major surprises do not occur in the field. In part the explanation and problem lie in the so-called fast-track approach to such projects, where only a certain amount of schematic design is produced before construction is started. (In a more normal “slow-track” building, problems can be spotted and ironed out in advance.) As Sabbagh shows, the pressure of many small decisions on the fast track can add up to the inertia of any huge structure in motion: it might be going in the wrong direction, but after a certain point you just cannot turn it around. Worldwide Plaza is structurally stable and economically sound. According to the story told in Skyscraper, however, design seems to be almost a by-product. A similar dilemma was succinctly expressed by Witold Rybczynski, author of The Most Beautiful House in the World (Viking Penguin, 1989), who cites an exchange between an architect and an engineer (p. 40): “I once asked an engineer friend to advise me on the design of a structural system, and his first question was: ‘Do you want something cheap or something architectural?’ ” Because of a frenzy of building before designing and the lack of an encompassing vision, Worldwide Plaza, while opting for both, achieved neither. Ivan Zaknic Prof. Zaknic is chairman of the Department of Art and Architecture at Lehigh University. Roadside America: The Automobile in Design and Culture. Edited by Jan Jennings. Ames: Iowa State University Press for the Society for Commercial Archeology, 1990. Pp. x + 220; illustrations, notes, index. $32.95. Those who study and preserve roadside structures that were built to serve and entertain motorists have been compelled to find meaning in these ephemeral but perennial, small but ubiquitous, plain or outrageously exotic emblems of the culture of motoring. Specialized, eclectic, lacking cultural significance in any local or traditional sense, and tending to be stylish products or vernacular expedients rather than intrinsically important architecture, roadside structures have required a multidisciplinary approach and a justification of their lasting value as history. Since its inception in 1978, the Society for Commercial Archeology (SCA) has delved into the material and social history of roadside structures and has focused on the many links between automobiles TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 199 and buildings. Individually, the SCA’s members have written scholarly articles about roadside structures from architectural, functional, social, and cultural perspectives. They have chipped away at public indifference to roadside structures as worthwhile preservation projects. While these orphans of the highway have crumbled, changed, and disappeared at a rate exceeding conventional struc tures, the SCA has won many converts to the idea of freezing some examples of our frenetic road-travel system so that we may study the accelerating pace of American life and the changing relationship between motorists and the hinterland. Now this small but lively group of preservationists and historians has produced its first book, a collection of essays presented at a conference on the history of the automobile cosponsored by the SCA and the Henry Ford Museum in 1988. The essays were written by history and geography professors, graduate students, and profession als in various architectural fields. All are members of the SCA. The scope ofRoadside America is broader than the title implies; there are excellent studies of roadside buildings and automobile culture per se, but many of the eighteen essays deal more generally with the spatial and geographic consequences of automobility. This approach widens the SCA’s arena of study from Mom-and-Pop diners, filling stations, and motels to the larger significance of automobiles and their effects on the human-made environment. Part 1, “Technology and Geography,” sets the tone for the book, but unfortunately this part is uneven and at times disappointing. Folke T. Kihlstedt considers the influence of the automobile and the new social value of...