A cracker of a book for fans of modernist architecture – capturing that place which sits between design and design-for-living. A gem of a read!

Lyra Kilston takes us on a fascinating journey from the East Coast to California, explaining how the desire to find a cure for tuberculosis led to a slice of LA and its surrounding valley’s becoming the ‘Sanitorium of the World’.  If you ever wondered why Los Angeles got the crown for the capital of health fads,  or how European architects such as Rudolf Schindler (architect of Lovell Health House) or Richard Neutra (architect of Lovell House) fit into the story, you will love this book.

Lyra explains, “Southern California’s ceaseless sunshine, healthful climate, and celebrated unorthodoxy has long entranced successive waves of radicals and iconoclasts. Examining several fascinating scenes from Golden State’s vast mythology, Lyra Kilston memorably entwines modernist architecture with natural medicine, an anti-civilizational stance with a return to nature, and such eclectic influences as vegetarianism, eugenics, nudism and heliotherapy.

If we may suggest, why not buy this book together with Holidays in Soviet Sanitorium