Best Architecture History & Periods
On August 19, 1418, a competition concerning Florence's magnificent new cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore--already under construction for more than a century--was announced: "Whoever desires to make any model or design for the vaulting of the main Dome....shall do so before the end of the month of September." He engineered the perfect placement of brick and stone, built ingenious hoists and cranes to carry an estimated 70 million pounds hundreds of feet into the air, and designed the workers' platforms and routines so carefully that only one man died during the decades of construction--all the while defying those who said the dome would surely collapse and his own personal obstacles that at times threatened to overwhelm him. Its span of more than 140 feet exceeds St Paul's in London and St Peter's in Rome, and even outdoes the Capitol in Washington, D.C., making it the largest dome ever constructed using bricks and mortar. He tells a compelling, informed story, ranging from discussions of the construction of the bricks, mortar, and marble that made up the dome, to its subsequent use as a scientific instrument by the Florentine astronomer Paolo Toscanelli. Walker was the hardcover publisher of Dava Sobel's sleeper smash, Longitude, and Mark Kurlansky's steady-seller Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World. British novelist King (previously unpublished in the U.S.) compiles an elementary introduction to the story of how and why Renaissance Italian architect Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446) designed and oversaw the construction of the enormous dome of Florence's Santa Maria del Fiore cathedralAdesigning its curves so that they needed no supporting framework during construction: a major Renaissance architectural innovation.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"I had the opportunity to attend a talk by Mr. Ross a couple weeks ago and it was so interesting that I purchased this book a couple days later."
"The prize was designing what would become the signature architectural landmark of Florence, Italy--the octagonal Dome of Santa Maria del Fiore. To put it into perspective, the dome would rise from an opening 18 stories above the street, and top out at the equivalent of a 38-story building. Filippo Brunelleschi won the contest by challenging the other competing architects to make an egg stand on its end. The inner dome was built first and like the frame of an automobile contained a series of horizontal and vertical supports that held everything together. The horizontal supports consisted of a series of sandstone and wood beams and iron chains that circled the dome like the hoops of a barrel, to keep the structure from spreading outward. Couple with the circular horizontal supports, the entire structure was a lattice work of cross members embedded within the brick-and-mortar walls. Brunelleschi did not have this luxury, as there were not enough trees in all of Tuscany to build the necessary scaffolding to reach the heights that were presented. With no visible means of support (and not understanding the law of compression), they believed the entire structure would collapse from its own weight and they would fall to their death. The reversible gear allowed loads to ascend and descend without the need of turning around the oxen team each time the direction was changed. Brunelleschi created a unique external covering system that consisted of tiles designed specially for easy assembly and maintenance. They are not well drawn, and in some cases not clear, such as the brick herringbone pattern used to build the dome: the illustration is small and difficult to figure out."
"This book was Amazing, especially for Engineers!"
"My main critique is that, while the prose was lucid and explanatory, I would have appreciated more photographs and -- especially -- diagrams and schematics depicting the architectural innovations employed (as well as rejected) in the building of the Santa Maria del Fiore's magnificent dome."
"Perhaps because I love Florence, have stood spellbound looking up at the dome of the church of Santa Maria del Fiore or perhaps because the story of how a man's dream of building a dome without buttresses or wooden centering (wooden support posts) actually came to pass."
"We are off to Florence tomorrow for two months, and this was the perfect primer...Ross discourses on the Times, people, customs, etc."
Written in the tradition of Tolstoy's War and Peace , Grossman’s Life and Fate , and Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago , Yuri Slezkine’s gripping narrative tells the true story of the residents of an enormous Moscow apartment building where top Communist officials and their families lived before they were destroyed in Stalin’s purges. "This panoramic history plotted as an epic family tragedy describes the lives of Bolshevik revolutionaries who were swallowed up by the cause they believed in. Yuri Slezkine’s guiding argument in this remarkable, many-layered account of the men (rarely women) who shaped the October Revolution is that the Bolsheviks were not a party but an apocalyptic sect. "A brilliant retelling of, mainly, the first two decades of the Soviet era in a sprawling saga centered around a famous and infamous Moscow apartment building created for the new elite." "[ The House of Government ] is a dizzying book, a hall of mirrors, panoramic and bizarre, as puzzlingly esoteric and thrillingly fervent as the doctrines it describes." As residents of the House of Government enjoy privileged childhoods, fall in love and marry, rise to power, betray each other, and are arrested and shot, we learn about the peculiar nature of Bolshevism and get a new history of Russia. But the book's compelling brilliance is its living organic nature--a mixture of historical narrative, novel, and family saga with echoes of Grossman, Pasternak, Solzhenitsyn, and even Tolstoy." Tolstoy himself would have recognized Yuri Slezkine as an artist, as the author of a narrative with transmogrifying power, an epic that functions on countless levels at the same time." Based on diaries, letters, memoirs, and interviews, featuring hundreds of rare photos, and combining history, biography, and social theory, this cornucopia of a book is a tour de force." "Using the House of Government as a microcosm of the rise and fall of the first generation of Soviet leaders and their utopian ideas, Yuri Slezkine's remarkable book illuminates the entire experience of Stalinism. Drawing on memoirs, letters, and literature, he lays bare the emotions of the Russian Revolution and its Bolshevik beneficiaries, from love and friendship to a commitment to the end that justified the most vicious means. "In this monumental study, Yuri Slezkine tells the story of the first Soviet ruling generation by looking through the windows of the remarkable building where many of them lived. It would take several lifetimes for mere mortals to locate, read, and figure out what to do with the diaries, letters, notebooks, and drawings Slezkine found in the archives. This family saga heightens the tragedy of the Russian Revolution and gives the reader a quality of understanding rarely achieved by any work of history." "Yuri Slezkine's brilliant account of the Soviet past shifts the story away from coal and iron statistics and into Bolshevik millenarianism, Communist love lives, and the terror that enveloped a generation of leaders.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Some even sought to have the relevant family apartments converted into museums, as secular shrines to the departed, although Moscow’s housing shortage, which remains a constant whatever the changes in ideological climate, militated against this outcome. Thus in the 550 fully furnished family apartments in the largest residential building in Europe the new Soviet aristocracy enjoyed high ceilings and central heating as standard, whilst also enjoying access to amenities including a hairdressing salon, kindergarten, gymnasium, tennis court, library, laundry, movie theatre, and a cafeteria from which meals could be ordered for collection, at a time when most Muscovites had to make do with dilapidated and overcrowded communal apartments in which the stale smell of cabbage soup competed with the general stench of despair."
"A masterpiece - Slezkine does a superb job of weaving personal stories through this historical work, using photos, trial transcripts, and letters."
"This is a massive hybrid work that tells the personal human story of the Revolutionary Soviet elite. The book is centered around the story of the massive housing complex in Moscow built for the elite around the time of the first five-year plan (around 1930). It has grand diversions into literature, religion, russian intellectual history and all sorts of other matters. Its length and its tendency to cross so many traditional lines makes it exceptionally interesting but difficult to review. Rather than being the product of one ruthless man, Stalinism seems within the context of the book to be the inevitable outcome of the system. The author's religious analogy actually works in this case in that if their ideas had been implemented, it would have been like throwing the entire country into a monastery. Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge came closest to actually making that model real with all the well-known consequences. I came away seeing more clearly what a dramatic change Lenin's NEP was for the true revolutionary faithful and how it created splits within the party that were eventually only resolved through the purge trials. Dealing with the question, he launches into a rambling history of nearly every religion in the world complete with lots of personal opinions an interpretations. Certain matters should have been included in perhaps extended appendix sections where they could stand alone as diversions into topics rather than interruptions of the narrative. It expects a great degree of familiarity with Russian and Soviet history in all its aspects (political, historical, religious, cultural, literary, intellectual and more...) I personally found it very rewarding as a read. Its narrowly focused on life at the very top of society and tending toward the stories of the true-believer party members."
"This book will give the reader a depth of understanding of the terrible tragedy that ensued upon the eventual triumph in 1917 of the millenarian politics of the Russian oppositional intelligentsia of the late 19th century."
Travel through the history of architecture in The LEGO Architect . "Stunning...be the Corbusier of LEGO.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"I am a huge fan of the “You view it and you do it” genre of LEGO books and Tom Alphin’s The LEGO Architect book is a winner. There’s a small model you can build that illustrates each style, yet it is pretty interesting to just look at the building instructions."
"This has been a great inspiration for my son to dig back into his misc."
"Got this as a gift for our niece, an architect who loves Lego."
"Bought this for my son who loves Legos."
"Much better than the book that comes with the LEGO Architect set."
"This book is beautiful and a great companion to the Lego Architecture book!"
"Very nice."
"Nice brief history of American architecture with tLEGO examples."
Best Religious Buildings Architecture
On August 19, 1418, a competition concerning Florence's magnificent new cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore--already under construction for more than a century--was announced: "Whoever desires to make any model or design for the vaulting of the main Dome....shall do so before the end of the month of September." He engineered the perfect placement of brick and stone, built ingenious hoists and cranes to carry an estimated 70 million pounds hundreds of feet into the air, and designed the workers' platforms and routines so carefully that only one man died during the decades of construction--all the while defying those who said the dome would surely collapse and his own personal obstacles that at times threatened to overwhelm him. Its span of more than 140 feet exceeds St Paul's in London and St Peter's in Rome, and even outdoes the Capitol in Washington, D.C., making it the largest dome ever constructed using bricks and mortar. He tells a compelling, informed story, ranging from discussions of the construction of the bricks, mortar, and marble that made up the dome, to its subsequent use as a scientific instrument by the Florentine astronomer Paolo Toscanelli. Walker was the hardcover publisher of Dava Sobel's sleeper smash, Longitude, and Mark Kurlansky's steady-seller Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World. British novelist King (previously unpublished in the U.S.) compiles an elementary introduction to the story of how and why Renaissance Italian architect Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446) designed and oversaw the construction of the enormous dome of Florence's Santa Maria del Fiore cathedralAdesigning its curves so that they needed no supporting framework during construction: a major Renaissance architectural innovation.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"There is much to recommend about King's discussion of the construction of the done over the Florentine basilica: his detail of early renaissance Florence is first-rate, the competition between Brunellesci and Ghiberti (not just over the dome, but thoughout their professional lives), the vibrant cross-section of brilliant, talented artists that was Florence in the 15th century all make for engaging reading."
"I had the opportunity to attend a talk by Mr. Ross a couple weeks ago and it was so interesting that I purchased this book a couple days later."
"The prize was designing what would become the signature architectural landmark of Florence, Italy--the octagonal Dome of Santa Maria del Fiore. To put it into perspective, the dome would rise from an opening 18 stories above the street, and top out at the equivalent of a 38-story building. Filippo Brunelleschi won the contest by challenging the other competing architects to make an egg stand on its end. The inner dome was built first and like the frame of an automobile contained a series of horizontal and vertical supports that held everything together. The horizontal supports consisted of a series of sandstone and wood beams and iron chains that circled the dome like the hoops of a barrel, to keep the structure from spreading outward. Couple with the circular horizontal supports, the entire structure was a lattice work of cross members embedded within the brick-and-mortar walls. Brunelleschi did not have this luxury, as there were not enough trees in all of Tuscany to build the necessary scaffolding to reach the heights that were presented. With no visible means of support (and not understanding the law of compression), they believed the entire structure would collapse from its own weight and they would fall to their death. The reversible gear allowed loads to ascend and descend without the need of turning around the oxen team each time the direction was changed. Brunelleschi created a unique external covering system that consisted of tiles designed specially for easy assembly and maintenance. They are not well drawn, and in some cases not clear, such as the brick herringbone pattern used to build the dome: the illustration is small and difficult to figure out."
"This book was Amazing, especially for Engineers!"
"My main critique is that, while the prose was lucid and explanatory, I would have appreciated more photographs and -- especially -- diagrams and schematics depicting the architectural innovations employed (as well as rejected) in the building of the Santa Maria del Fiore's magnificent dome."
Best Architectural Photography
Cleveland storyteller Dan Ruminski discovered that the 6 acres under his home were originally part of a 1,400-acre grand estate known as the Circle W Farm created by Walter White, founding brother of the White Motor Company. Cleveland native Alan Dutka authored "East Fourth Street: The Rise, Decline, and Rebirth of an Urban Cleveland Street," with Cleveland Landmark Press, and four business books.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Gave me valuable information on the beginnings of the Perfection Stove Company."
"Enjoying reading the history of the Giants of industry who made Cleveland great."
"As a Clevelander....I love it!"
"This book was a revelation."
"don't you just adore when your books arrive and there either bigger or smaller then you expected?"
"Such an amazing book, I learned so much."
"I have been wanted to learn more about this time in the Cleveland area."
"I was very disappointed in this book."
Best European Architecture
The Eiffel Tower is perhaps the most famous tall building in the world, an icon of its own age and ours. Yet, at the moment of his triumph, scandal beckoned. David I. Harvie is a freelance film editor, and a regular contributor of feature on history and social history to newspapers and magazines.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Mr. Eiffel leaves his visionary talent all over the world including the global treasure, The Eiffel Tower."
"The numerous viaducts on the railway were built in the 1860s using cast iron columns braced with wrought iron tie bars, with the joints carefully separated and reinforced, unlike those of the later Tay bridge. The disaster was caused by premature failure of the joints, despite the known hazards of this form of construction, as described in Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay: reinvestgating the Tay Bridge disaster of 1879."
"This book suffers from a severe lack of coherency, choppy flow and is a major pain to read."
Best United States Architecture
Involving such key figures of the l930s as Frida Kahlo, Albert Einstein, Henry R. Luce, William Randolph Hearst, Ayn Rand, and Franklin Roosevelt, Fallingwater Rising shows us how E. J. Kaufmann’s house became not just Wright’s masterpiece but a fundamental icon of American life. One of the pleasures of the book is its rich evocation of the upper-crust society of Pittsburgh–Carnegie, Frick, the Mellons–a society that was socially reactionary but luxury-loving and baronial in its tastes, hobbies, and sexual attitudes (Kaufmann had so many mistresses that his store issued them distinctive charge plates they could use without paying). Architectural historian Toker (Pittsburgh: An Urban Portrait) approaches the building as a tense but fruitful collaboration between Wright's genius and the encouragement given it by his patron, Pittsburgh department store magnate E. J. Kaufmann, whom Toker credits with being "almost... the coarchitect" of the house. According to legend, Wright dallied for months after receiving the commission, then drew up the plans in just two hours, as his client, the Pittsburgh department-store magnate E. J. Kaufmann, was en route to Wright's studio to check on his progress.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Great used condition and signed by the author!"
"Despite its encyclopedic scope and thorough research and analysis, the book ironically fails to really get at the essence of the creative process that resulted in Fallingwater -- especially the contributions of EJ Kaufmann."
"I gave it an unusually high rating and mentionend how much I enjoyed the book and liked owning it and spent time discussing all the books for Amazon last night."
"I love it!!!"
"or should I say, "Wonder FALL", as this is the must have for all Frank Lloyd Wright fans."
"Just finished reading this book."
Best Middle Eastern Architecture
Among the glories of world architecture, Islamic mosques and palaces — from Spain to Egypt and other parts of the Middle East — are universally studied and admired.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon""When Muhammad redirected his prayers from the Temple at Jerusalem to the Kaaba at Mecca, the ancient Arabian center of pagan pilgrimage, he turned Islam into a national Arab movement." "The mosque is a shelter and a refuge from the turbulent life of the crowded city." Incredibly, Hoag mastered Mayan, Aztec, Egyptian, Islamic art and architecture - and it shows in his ability to cover concisely 1300+ years of the Muslim's urge to convey the centrality of God in his life through architecture."
Best History of Italy
In the second volume of his epic trilogy about the liberation of Europe in World War II, Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Atkinson tells the harrowing story of the campaigns in Sicily and Italy. The Italian campaign's outcome was never certain; in fact, Roosevelt, Churchill, and their military advisers engaged in heated debate about whether an invasion of the so-called soft underbelly of Europe was even a good idea. Amazon Best of the Month, November 2007 : Topping a Pulitzer Prize-winning effort is tough; finding originality in a World War II narrative is even tougher. Atkinson surpasses his Pulitzer-winning An Army at Dawn in this empathetic, perceptive analysis of the second stage in the U.S. Army's grassroots development from well-intentioned amateurs to the most formidable fighting force of World War II. The battles in Sicily and Italy developed the combat effectiveness and the emotional hardness of a U.S. Army increasingly constrained to bear the brunt of the Western allies' war effort, he argues.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"The Italian campaign cost a great number of lives, and Atkinson doesn't disrespect their sacrifice; however, I had a difficult time connecting with the flow of events - the terrain, the battles, and the personalities of the different "players" - American, German, and Italian...I thought the sidelight on Mussolini was great, but too short...and the disposition of troops and the campaign after Rome / D-day was non-existent - although the Italian campaign continued to the end of the war..."
"I knew of the slow progress Allied forces made in awful winter conditions, with the Germans holding out for months and months from brutal attacks amid heavy Allied losses. I was filled with an immense respect for those men, many of whom were scarcely a year or two older than I was at the time in '43 and '44. Imagine my shock of recognition, and my gratitude for Rick Atkinson magnificent second World War II book, "The Day of Battle: The War In Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944". Having seen that beautiful and awfully forbidding terrain, I found his descriptions more than adequate, they are unmatched in their narrative power to inform and to engage the reader emotionally and spiritually in recalling what mere human beings, on both sides, were able to will themselves to accomplish in a great moral cataclysm."
"We see clearly the command friction between U.S. and British civilian and military leaders along with the rigors faced by the common troops involved in the ground war and a slight glimpse at the first real use of heavy bombers in providing tactical air support to overwhelmed ground forces along with the travails faced by naval forces supporting the operations."
"All aspects of the conflict from the strategy, tactics, the politics, logistics and the daily grind on everyone, from the multi-star generals to the dog face infantry trooper on the line, is exceptionally well researched and the picture painted with vivid clarity."
"If I have any qualms it is the length of it and the sheer incompetence of our allied commanders, especially in North Africa and Italy."
"As I read the text, I would like to follow along on the maps, but having a kindle makes that difficult."
Best Historic Preservation
He has set a high standard for what all historic house museums strive for: magnificently preserved buildings and grounds, engaging interpretation, and--perhaps most challenging of all--economic self-sufficiency. "If George Vanderbilt did nothing more than engage the two most prominent and storied designers of their time, architect Richard Morris Hunt and landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, to carry out his vision of a European estate in the southern Appalachians, he would have created an American icon. Built in 1895 by George Vanderbilt, who played lord of the manor to hundreds of tenant farmers and servants, the estate passed in the 1960s to his grandson William Cecil, whose tight-fisted budgets, canny marketing initiatives and rapt attention to customer service turned it into a profitable museum of robber-baron privilege, selling more tickets than Colonial Williamsburg. Covington defends the Biltmore owner's model of private, for-profit historical preservation against charges of commercialism leveled by nonprofit preservationists, repeats his complaints about inheritance taxes, extols his entrepreneurial daring, salutes his Biltmore restoration projects ("surpassed what many had seen anywhere") and raves about "customer satisfaction reports... comparable to those enjoyed by a five-star resort." Covington defends the Biltmore owner's model of private, for-profit historical preservation against charges of commercialism leveled by nonprofit preservationists, repeats his complaints about inheritance taxes, extols his entrepreneurial daring, salutes his Biltmore restoration projects ("surpassed what many had seen anywhere") and raves about "customer satisfaction reports... comparable to those enjoyed by a five-star resort."
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Very interesting."
"Had to get after the visit."
"This wonderful book about the Biltmore Estate shows some photos that I had never seen before, and really tells the story of how it was conceived and built -- then lived in -- then restored and opened as a true USA treasure Estate!"
"If you've visited Biltmore, walked it's halls, climbed the Grand Staircase, savored the Library, and said "Wow" more than once, then this book is for you."
"Great read."
"If you love to feel like are behind the scenes you will love this book."
"I am a history teacher and love reading about old families and wealth and I have been to the biltmore on many occasions."
Best Moscow Travel Guides
Written in the tradition of Tolstoy's War and Peace , Grossman’s Life and Fate , and Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago , Yuri Slezkine’s gripping narrative tells the true story of the residents of an enormous Moscow apartment building where top Communist officials and their families lived before they were destroyed in Stalin’s purges. "This panoramic history plotted as an epic family tragedy describes the lives of Bolshevik revolutionaries who were swallowed up by the cause they believed in. A twelve-hundred-page epic that recounts the multigenerational story of the famed building and its inhabitants--and, at least as interesting, the rise and fall of Bolshevist faith." "Yuri Slezkine, Mercurian par excellence, has caught an extraordinary set of lives in this book. Few historians, dead or alive, have managed to combine so spectacularly the gifts of storyteller and scholar." Yuri Slezkine’s guiding argument in this remarkable, many-layered account of the men (rarely women) who shaped the October Revolution is that the Bolsheviks were not a party but an apocalyptic sect. The House of Government is a compelling microhistory of the interwar Soviet elite, but it is also a literary-rhetorical tour de force." "A brilliant retelling of, mainly, the first two decades of the Soviet era in a sprawling saga centered around a famous and infamous Moscow apartment building created for the new elite." "[ The House of Government ] is a dizzying book, a hall of mirrors, panoramic and bizarre, as puzzlingly esoteric and thrillingly fervent as the doctrines it describes."
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Some even sought to have the relevant family apartments converted into museums, as secular shrines to the departed, although Moscow’s housing shortage, which remains a constant whatever the changes in ideological climate, militated against this outcome. Thus in the 550 fully furnished family apartments in the largest residential building in Europe the new Soviet aristocracy enjoyed high ceilings and central heating as standard, whilst also enjoying access to amenities including a hairdressing salon, kindergarten, gymnasium, tennis court, library, laundry, movie theatre, and a cafeteria from which meals could be ordered for collection, at a time when most Muscovites had to make do with dilapidated and overcrowded communal apartments in which the stale smell of cabbage soup competed with the general stench of despair."
"A masterpiece - Slezkine does a superb job of weaving personal stories through this historical work, using photos, trial transcripts, and letters."
"This is a massive hybrid work that tells the personal human story of the Revolutionary Soviet elite. The book is centered around the story of the massive housing complex in Moscow built for the elite around the time of the first five-year plan (around 1930). It has grand diversions into literature, religion, russian intellectual history and all sorts of other matters. Its length and its tendency to cross so many traditional lines makes it exceptionally interesting but difficult to review. Rather than being the product of one ruthless man, Stalinism seems within the context of the book to be the inevitable outcome of the system. The author's religious analogy actually works in this case in that if their ideas had been implemented, it would have been like throwing the entire country into a monastery. Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge came closest to actually making that model real with all the well-known consequences. I came away seeing more clearly what a dramatic change Lenin's NEP was for the true revolutionary faithful and how it created splits within the party that were eventually only resolved through the purge trials. Dealing with the question, he launches into a rambling history of nearly every religion in the world complete with lots of personal opinions an interpretations. Certain matters should have been included in perhaps extended appendix sections where they could stand alone as diversions into topics rather than interruptions of the narrative. It expects a great degree of familiarity with Russian and Soviet history in all its aspects (political, historical, religious, cultural, literary, intellectual and more...) I personally found it very rewarding as a read. Its narrowly focused on life at the very top of society and tending toward the stories of the true-believer party members."
"This book will give the reader a depth of understanding of the terrible tragedy that ensued upon the eventual triumph in 1917 of the millenarian politics of the Russian oppositional intelligentsia of the late 19th century."