"Mansfield tracks our need to reconnect with place and memory. He offers journalistic descriptions of some of the people who are realizing their own visions of the restorative impulse.". "The act of restoration, Mansfield concludes, whether it's rebuilding antique engines or reviving the village model of community organization, must contain an element of renewal. Rejecting the sentimentality of nostalgia and the superficiality of commercial appropriation, Mansfield argues for an understanding of restoration that is concerned as much with the future as it is with the past, that preserves and communicates a spirit as well as a form."--BOOK JACKET.