What’s So Great about the Eiffel Tower: 70 Questions That Will Change the Way You Think about Architecture

Architecture critic Glancey, formerly the architecture and design editor of the Guardian, serves up 70 short, provocative essays about architectural masterworks and how personal impressions about them have evolved throughout history as individuals redefine architectural tenets to fit evolving beliefs and values. Glancey ruminates on such topics as whether cities of architectural masterpieces, such as Venice, should serve as museums or as living organisms, and whether the automobile has served as a liberator of citizens or a conqueror of cities. The book employs etchings and photographs scattered throughout the text to help illustrate its many points, and contains a thorough index listing architects, buildings, and historic styles. Glancey discusses many thoughtful and salient concerns regarding architectural history and theory, but his book is as much polemic as architectural study. Color photos. (Feb.)