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When the late Spiro Kostof's A History of Architecture appeared in 1985, it was universally hailed as a masterpiece--one of the finest books on architecture ever written. The New York Times Book Review, in a front cover review, called it "a magnificent guided tour through mankind's architecture," and The San Francisco Chronicle wrote that "Kostof...has enthralled a generation of students.... Now he has done the same thing for the public at large, in an extraordinary book that is a new kind of architectural history." This magisterial work has now been revised and expanded by Greg Castillo, Kostof's colleague and literary executor. Insightful, engagingly written, and graced with almost a thousand superb illustrations, the Second Edition of this classic volume offers a sweeping narrative that examines architecture as it reflects the social, economic, and technological systems of human history. The scope of the book is astonishing. No mere survey of famous buildings, Kostof's History examines a surprisingly wide variety of manmade structures: prehistoric huts and the TVA, the pyramids at Giza and the Rome railway station, the ziggurat and the department store. Indeed, Kostof considered every building worthy of attention, every structure or shelter a potential source of insight, whether it be the prehistoric hunting camps at Terra Amata, or the caves at Lascaux with their magnificent paintings, or a twenty-story hotel on the Las Vegas strip. The Second Edition features a new concluding chapter, "Designing the Fin de Siècle," based on Kostof's last lecture notes and prepared by Castillo, as well as an all-new 16-page color section. Many of the original line drawings by Richard Tobias, as well as some 50 photographs, have also been updated or replaced, for improved clarity. Visually and intellectually stimulating, this book is at once a compelling history and an indispensable reference on all aspects of our built environment. It achieves for architecture what Janson's history accomplished for visual art.

Tabla de contenidos provista por Syndetics

• A Place On Earth
• 1 The Study of What We Built
• 2 The Cave and the Sky: Stone Age Europe
• 3 The Rise of the City: Architecture in Western Asia
• 4 The Architecture of Ancient Egypt
• 5 Bronze Age Cities: The Aegean and Asia Minor
• 6 Greek Temple and ""Barbarian"" Alternatives
• 7 Polis and Akropolis
• 8 The Hellenistic Realm
• 9 Rome: Caput Mundi
• 10 The World at Large: Roman Concurrences
• Measuring Up
• 11 The Triumph of Christ
• 12 The Mediterranean in the Early Middle Ages
• 13 The Birth of Nations: Europe after Charles
• 14 The French Manner
• 15 The Urbanization of Europe
• 16 Edges of Medievalism
• 17 The Renaissance: Ideal and Fad
• 18 Spain and the New World
• 19 Istanbul and Venice
• 20 The Popes as Planners: Rome 150-1650
• 21 Absolutism and Bourgeoisie: European Architecture 1600-1750
• The Search For Self
• 22 Architecture for a New World
• 23 Architectural Art and the Landscape of Industry
• 24 The American Experience
• 25 Victorian Environments
• 26 The Trials of Modernism
• 27 Architecture and the State: Interwar Years
• 28 At Peace with the Past: The Last Decades
• 29 Designing the Fin-de-Siecle

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CHOICE Review

Kostof is about to join the distinguished but slim ranks of architectural TV celebrities when he will host a Spring 1987 PBS Television series ``America by Design.'' At the base of his fame is this substantial and impressive volume that has been ten years in the making. Kostof's History ... is much larger than S.F. Kimball and G.H. Edgell's A History of Architecture (1946), larger than Hamlin's Architecture Through the Ages (1953), and larger even than Banister Fletcher's History of Architecture (8th ed., 1975); it is not, of course, necessarily better. Neither does it eclipse their works. On the contrary, it restores their importance and authority but also-like the buildings Kostof so lovingly describes-transcends them by situating itself in the context of our time. In several aspects, Kostof's History can be said to be postmodern. His program is to transcend the more typical sequential narrative of historical periods and styles: ``1. the material aspect of every building should be looked at in its entirety; 2. the building should be thought of in a broader physical framework and not just in terms of itself; 3. all buildings of the past, regardless of size or status or consequence, should ideally be deemed worthy of study. And finally, the extramaterial elements that affect the existence of buildings should be considered indispensable to their appreciation.'' Kostof does very well by this self-imposed program, and also with the parallel examinations of non-Western architecture. His cross-cultural chapters are among the most exciting and intelligent. On the other hand, Kostof's aim is ``to put aside the invidious distinctions between architecture and building.'' His inclusion of vernacular architecture, for which he passionately pleads, is in the end quite limited, and his chapter on the `American Experience' is in this respect remarkably routine. His last chapter on postmodernism is comparatively shy and tentative. Kostof's book is erudite, very readable, and a rich contribution to the field. It is very well illustrated with photographs and drawings throughout-the drawings by Richard Tobias are fine and exciting. An important acquisition for public and academic libraries.-B. Jacob, University of Minnesota

Notas de autor provistas por Syndetics

Spiro Kostof was Professor of Architectural History at the University of California at Berkeley, and was a former president of the Society of Architectural Historians. Greg Castillo was Kostof's research assistant and literary executor.