Kentucky Bluegrass

I first learned about America’s turfgrass problem from Diana Balmori and Fritz Haeg’s book, Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn. The book, a companion to Haeg’s ongoing art project involving replacing front lawns with vegetable gardens, changed both my lawn and my life. I also recommend The Lawn: A History of an American Obsession by Virginia Scott Jenkins and Ted Steinberg’s American Green: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Lawn. Oregon State University’s “BeaverTurf” web portal helped me understand which turfgrass is Kentucky bluegrass and where it is widely cultivated. The estimate on the percentage of American land devoted to the growth of turfgrass comes from a study in Environmental Management called “Mapping and Modeling the Biogeochemical Cycling of Turf Grasses in the United States,” lead author Cristina Milesi. The statistic about almost a third of U.S. residential water use going to watering lawns comes from the EPA’s “Outdoor Water Use in the United States.”

The Indianapolis 500

My favorite book about the Indy 500 explores its formation and the first race at the Speedway: Charles Leerhsen’s Blood and Smoke: A True Tale of Mystery, Mayhem, and the Birth of the Indy 500. I owe my interest in IndyCar to my best friend, Chris Waters, and to other members of our race crew, especially Marina Waters, Shaun Souers, Kevin Schoville, Nate Miller, and Tom Edwards. Our branch of the annual bike-to-the-race tradition was founded by Kevin Daly. Thanks also to IndyCar drivers James Hinchcliffe and Alexander Rossi for giving me an idea of how racing works for the drivers, and how they live with the risks inherent to the sport.

Monopoly

Mary Pilon’s book The Monopolists is a comprehensive history of Monopoly’s early days and especially illuminating in its portrayal of Elizabeth Magie. I was introduced to the video game Universal Paperclips by Elyse Marshall and her husband, Josef Pfeiffer. I learned of Hasbro’s response to Elizabeth Magie from Antonia Noori Farzan’s 2019 Washington Post piece, “The New Monopoly ‘Celebrates Women Trailblazers.’ But the Game’s Female Inventor Still Isn’t Getting Credit.” That piece also contains the most concise and comprehensible summary of Georgism I’ve come across.

Super Mario Kart

The Super Mario wiki (mariowiki.com) is so astonishingly exhaustive and carefully sourced that it might be the best wiki I’ve ever encountered. Its article about Super Mario Kart gave me much of the background I needed for this review. The interview with Shigeru Miyamoto I quote comes from a Nintendo roundtable; it’s available online under the headline “It Started with a Guy in Overalls.”

Bonneville Salt Flats

Donald Hall’s essay “The Third Thing” was first published in Poetry magazine in 2005; I was introduced to it by Kaveh Akbar and Ellen Grafton. Much of the information about the Bonneville Salt Flats came from the Utah Geological Survey; I am particularly indebted to Christine Wilkerson’s article “GeoSights: Bonnevile Salt Flats, Utah.” I learned about the history of the Enola Gay and Wendover from the artist William Lamson and the Center for Land Use Interpretation in Wendover. The Melville quote is from Moby-Dick, which I read only thanks to the dogged efforts of Professor Perry Lentz. We were joined on that trip to Wendover by Mark Olsen and Stuart Hyatt, both of whom deeply enriched my understanding of the salt flats.