What Style Is It?: A Guide to American Architecture, Revised Edition,   ISBN:9780471250364

Customer Rating: 

This book could be concidered a fun reference book. It has many photos and illustrations for each style. I like the unsual dimentions of the book. Each style is shown in photos, diagram, and words. The examples chosen for each style are not necessarily the ones that are commonly used in textbooks. If you are a budding architecture fan, I believe you will enjoy this book.

Customer Rating: 

This is the most dissapointing of architectural field guides because it had the potential to have been the very best. John Poppeliers was the head of the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) and Allen Chambers was an historian with the Historic American Buildings Survey. Quite simply they had access to 51,000 sheets of measured drawings, 156,000 large format black and white photographs and over 20,000 reproductions of individual items. With all of that access, they could have produced the ultimate architectural field guide. Instead they produced a 146 page superficial guide.

The best aspect of this guide are the line drawings produced for the Historic American Building Survey. They are two dimensional drawings that are almost surgical in their precision. The building photographs are also first class.The narrative describing the different elements of the style is short and to the point.

The second edition of this book was published in 2003. In my opinion, if someone is going to introduce a new field guide into this already crowded arena, it has to offer something new. I would recommend sticking with the already proven field guides by Lester Walker, Rachel Carley, Carole Rifkind or Virginia McAllister.

This book is recommended for people with really short attention spans. This book is a dissapointment. Oh, what it could have been. One day, somebody from the HABS project will produce the ultimate architectural field guide.

Customer Rating: 

Not nearly as good, useful, or comprehensive as A Field Guide to American Houses by McAlester.

Customer Rating: 

I'm not that into architecture but this book was pretty good. I had to use it for my local history course. The images were good and helpful in the explanations on each of the pages.

Customer Rating: 

This book is fine if you are looking only for a very brief look at American Architecture. It does not organize architectural styles to give a comprehensive overview of them. It does, however, present example photos of various styles with easy-to-read text briefly describing the styles. If you want a book that is handy and comprehensive, no other book can compare to A Field Guide to American Houses, by Virginia and Lee McAlester (ISBN 0-394-73969-8). This book will give you a comprehensive framework of the development of American Architecture so that you can build your understanding as you become exposed examples in the field. Everything from windows and doors to contruction techniques are covered. The book is organized in such a way that you can find what you need quickly. It is the cornerstone in the study of American Architecture.