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Victor Gruen, like many successful idealists, might have been happier as a failure. Gruen cherished great European public spaces and genuinely believed that he could build functioning, satisfying public squares in the heart of American shopping centres. Toward the end of his career, however, he recoiled in horror at the sprawl he had helped to create, accused developers of betraying his vision and retreated to the urbanity of his native Vienna. In spite of his guilty conscience, he could not help himself from introducing the American shopping mall to classic European cities, including Vienna.
Mall Maker, Hardwick's readable treatment of Gruen's career, offers much for urban historians. His research methods, for instance, provide solid support for his broad, and original, claims about Gruen's national importance. Hardwick...