The story of how one woman's long love affair with New York's Central Park led her to organize its rescue from a state of serious decline, returning it to the beautiful place of recreational opportunity and spiritual sustenance that it is today.
...[a] compelling memoir ... Saving Central Park is enlivened by extracts from Ms. Rogers’s personal journal, which add a sense of immediacy to her narrative ... The book’s useful 'before' and 'after' photographs will remind younger readers, who have never experienced the park except in its current state, of the challenging work that needed to be done ... The author’s reasonable voice rings clear in this beautifully written memoir, steely resolve beneath old-fashioned courtesy.
...a detailed and moving account of her love affair with urban America’s most renowned green place ... Barlow’s powerful words...demonstrate that she is not just an astonishingly accomplished and inspired motivator of people who helped create a new paradigm for public-private partnerships. She’s also an accomplished and convincing author.
Part history, part memoir, part manifesto on landscape design, her chronicle charts the conservancy’s rise and Rogers’ own, from scrappy outsider to power-playing insider. The book’s true protagonist is the park itself, whose artistic allure Rogers captures with impressive attention to detail.
