A Carpenter's Life as Told by Houses

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY JUN 13, 2011

Drawing on a life spent building houses all over the U.S., Haun creates a first-person time line of 20th-century American residential architecture by wonderfully combining two literary styles: the memoir and the how-to book. The former editor of Fine Homebuilding, Haun writes like a carpenter, setting up the foundation of his life story with his childhood growing up in rural, Depression-scarred Nebraska, where people still lived in houses made of sod and straw. This upbringing gave Haun a connection to the land and a disdain for waste that informs his life and beliefs as he builds upon his story with the life lessons learned building houses all over the country. Just like any good carpenter, Haun brings his own artistic flourishes to the job of storytelling, adding prose poems or ruminations about consumerism that convey his creativity and thoughtfulness. But where Haun's true personality comes across is when he describes the construction process for the many houses he has lived in and built from his parents' 1,000-sq.-ft. wood-frame house and the adobe and cob structures of the Southwest to the mid-century prefabricated and tract houses, and the more recent Habitat for Humanity homes he has donated his time to help erect. In the final chapter, Haun's passion for building and his love of "Mother Earth" come together as he outlines how he built his own "6-ft. by 8-ft." greenhouse out of salvaged and recycled pieces, bringing the story full circle and furthering the author's message that less can certainly be more. Photos and drawings.