With my rudimentary background on New Harmony, Avant-Garde in the Cornfields, a scholarly history of New Harmony's built environment in the second half of the twentieth century, is very welcome. Yet I couldn't help but first jump to the chapter devoted to the Atheneum. It's the last chapter in the book, written by Ben Nicholson, who edited it with Michelangelo Sabatino, who wrote the Introduction. Nicholson's contribution comes after a half-dozen chapters by various historians on preservation, patronage, gardens, art, and architecture; they are in a roughly chronological order and also move from a broad canvas to specific case studies (one is on Philip Johnson's Roofless Church, the building on the cover). 

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