“Walls is a wide-ranging, cogent, and penetrating analysis of walls and boundaries. There are very few books on walls of any sort and none with this sophistication. It is a pleasure to find an interdisciplinary mind at work in the center of the discipline of landscape architecture.”

John Stilgoe | Harvard University

“This insightful book unfolds a liminal poem by Robert Frost into a penetrating study of one of the most critical landscape phenomena of our time, the wall. This is a born classic concerned with the problem presented by the wall for the political, the cultural, and the designed landscape. The idea that the wall, once recovered, can not only enclose, but also create an opening into the world is both surprising and important.”

Kenneth Olwig, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences

“What would it be like to dwell in a world of walls—a world where everything of consequence goes on in, on, along and through them rather than on the inside or on the outside? In this comprehensive cultural history of walls, fences, and hedges, from the first walled settlements of prehistory to futuristic scenarios for international borders, Thomas Oles shows that though such a world may seem strange to us, it is in fact the one we have always inhabited. This book reconstructs the wall where it belongs, no longer on the edge but at the center of human lived experience, political machination, and ethical concern. Cultural historians, human geographers, and landscape architects should prepare to have their worldviews turned inside out! ”

Timothy Ingold, University of Aberdeen

“In this engrossing ethical study, landscape architect Oles ponders walls and their potential for oppression or human exchange. Drawing on rich historical examples such as Britain's economically and ecologically valuable hedgerows, Oles offers an ethics test for proposed barriers that questions whether they support commonalities or embed differences.”

Nature

“Brilliant.”

First Things