No one would question the force on our lives that can be exerted by that simple common childhood experience of Summer Camp, but what is that experience really all about? And where did it all come from? That's the subject of a new book, A Manufactured Wilderness, from the University of Minnesota Press.

Abigail A. Van Slyck trains an informed eye on the most visible and evocative aspect of camp life: its landscape and architecture. She argues that summer camps delivered much more than a simple encounter with the natural world. Instead, she suggests, camps provided a man-made version of wilderness, shaped by middle-class anxieties about gender roles, class tensions, race relations, and modernity and its impact on the lives of children.
[ via A Manufactured Wilderness ]

Packed with period photos, promotional brochures, maps and plans, art history professor Abigail Van Slyck chronicals our changing attitudes to health, play and relationships as seen through the mirror of summer camp culture.