Architectural Books

Stone by Design

Lew French

Amazon Price: $19.77 List Price: $29.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Gibbs Smith, Publisher Amazon Marketplace: 34 new & used starting at $18.64

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Subjects -> Arts & Photography -> Photography -> Architectural
Subjects -> Home & Garden -> Interior Design -> Decorating
Subjects -> Home & Garden -> Interior Design -> Decoration & Ornament

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 16 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

True Beauty 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.

This book is pure pleasure. The artfulness in creating the spaces we live in with stone in pattern, an organic extension of this earth. This is not a 'paint by numbers' how-to book, rather, like looking at a
Rembrandt, ultimate examples of stone taken to true art.

Stone By Design 3 out of 5 stars.
2 of 6 people found this review helpful.

Caught a TV article on Lew French - CBS Sunday Morning. What a fabulous
artist! I bought the book based on the show. The book was not as good
but not bad. It's still very interesting stuff with some beautiful photography.

Shows stonework can be true art. 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 3 people found this review helpful.

This book is 5 stars all the way. Lew French shows his masterful stonework in the many photos this book provides. If you are interested in what can be done in stone and how stone can be used to create a "WOW FACTOR", this book is made to order.
Every other page has photos that are "WOW".
Is you love stone you need to see this book.

Editorial Review:

More than 125 gorgeous photographs showcase the beauty of award-winning stonemason Lew French's work in eight different homes, illustrating how rounded fieldstone, gray slate, rough granite, and even curvy driftwood can be incorporated into stunning pieces of functional art.

A Photographic Atlas of Histology

Michael J. Leboffe

Amazon Price: $36.95 List Price: $36.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Morton Publishing Company Amazon Marketplace: 15 new & used starting at $34.50

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Vanishing America: The End of Main Street Diners, Drive-Ins, Donut Shops, and Other Everyday Monuments

Michael Eastman, William H. Gass

Amazon Price: $26.37 List Price: $39.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Rizzoli Amazon Marketplace: 34 new & used starting at $21.98

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Subjects -> Arts & Photography -> Photography -> Photo Essays

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Think of the quirky buildings you pass every day but whose quiet beauty you take for granted—the moviehouses, juke joints, soda fountains, barbershops, roadside diners, and storefront churches. You don’t miss them until they’re gone. As suburban sprawl and strip malls conquer the country, these vestiges of a lost way of life are falling under the wrecking ball. Here the photographer Michael Eastman has made the ultimate road trip, crisscrossing the nation dozens of times, to capture these buildings on film before they vanish. These dreamy images call us to question what we choose to let go in the wake of contemporary life, with a cool melancholy that evokes the work of Edward Hopper, Jack Kerouac, and William Eggleston. There is a wry sense of humor here as well. The book delights in the idiosyncracies of America’s vernacular styles, ranging from Depression Deco to New England clapboard in random juxtapositions that accrue over time in a town’s landscape. Countless visual puns arise among the book’s many detailed images of signs and statuettes. Vanishing America catalogues great everyday American architecture and design. But it also offers a provocative portrait of the silent emptiness that has descended upon vanishing small communities everywhere.

Night Vision: The Art of Urban Exploration

Troy Paiva

Amazon Price: $16.47 List Price: $24.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Chronicle Books Amazon Marketplace: 29 new & used starting at $14.08

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

The color of black 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 6 people found this review helpful.

I thought this collection of Paiva's night photos much better than his previous 2003 book Lost America: The Abandoned Roadside West mainly because Lost was issued by Motorbooks, a publisher of picture books rather than photo books which unfortunately meant that Paiva's images were mixed together with text in rather bland spreads. Chronicle Books are much more sympathetic to creative endeavors and with 'Night Vision' they give these remarkable photos the presentation they deserve.

All the photos pages are black which certainly enhances their appeal and air of desolation but it also throws up Paiva's use of colored spots which, by now, is clearly his trademark. The five photo chapters reveal a wonderful selection of man-made abandonment. Chapter five featuring photos of the Aviation Warehouse at El Mirage, California is my favorite. To my mind nothing looks so dead and poignant as scrapped jetliners with miles of cabling, spars and struts from a half dismantled fuselage and cockpits with dust covered instrument clusters. The twenty-six photos capture all this so well.

The four other chapters cover: the abandoned Byron Hot Springs Hotel between Oakland and Stockton, California; Desert; Southern Pacific's Oakland train station in all its crumbling splendor and decommissioned military bases. This last photo section could easily make a separate book with plenty of abandoned bases across the US.


In the front of the book Paiva writes about his photo technique and adventures as a solitary nighttime snapper. He also writes a short intro to each photo chapter. The layout and printing are fine (with 175 screen) though I thought the blue captions on each page are rather hard to read in a domestic lighting environment.

'Night Vision' delivers some wonderful images in a format they deserve rather than the bland presentation that weakened the photos in 'Lost America'.

***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.

Editorial Review:

A booming subculture is on the rise: dubbed Urban Exploration, it involves sneaking into abandoned or off-limits factories, aviation "boneyards," decommissioned bases, and other derelict features of the military/industrial landscape. Troy Paiva is a foremost photographer of the UrbEx (as it's known to its devotees) phenomenon, and his distinctive blend of atmospheric night photos and lighting effects are the visual hallmarks of a scene that has drawn the increasing attention of the media and the public—as seen in recent programs on both the Discovery Channel ("Urban Explorers") and MTV ("Fear"). Illuminated by histories of the sites documented, Night Vision reveals the remarkable discoveries of a new generation of explorers.

Angkor: Cambodia's Wondrous Khmer Temples, Fifth Edition (Odyssey Illustrated Guide)

Dawn Rooney, Peter Danford

Amazon Price: $16.47 List Price: $24.95 Usually ships in 2 to 4 weeks By: Odyssey Amazon Marketplace: 10 new & used starting at $16.47

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Subjects -> Arts & Photography -> Museums & Collections -> Museums -> Exhibition Catalogs
Subjects -> Arts & Photography -> Photography -> Architectural

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Should be required for visitors to Angkor 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

This book is an absolute necessity for visiting Angkor, at least if one has an interest in archaeology. In fact, knowing what I know now, I would have skipped hiring a guide and just rented a bicycle with this book as my guide. It is comprehensive, well-illustrated (although the illustrations are not always tied to the adjacent text--my most serious complaint about the book), and has the right balance between academic and popular interest. It is well-worth the extra weight involved in taking it along to Asia (I wish they had used cheaper paper and binding to make it lighter, but then the pictures wouldn't have been so inviting). Maps and organization make it easy to use, although the index sometimes is off by a page or two--perhaps they didn't update it all from the 4th ed. At any rate, it is far superior to all other guides I found on the subject.

Editorial Review:

The great legacy of the ancient Khmer civilization, the temples of Angkor were built between the ninth and 15th centuries and cover an area stretching across 77 square miles in northwest Cambodia. This beautifully illustrated book contains a comprehensive monument-by-monument guide to the sites, detailed maps and plans, plus information about ten newly accessible temple complexes.
• Ten new temple sites; an additional 180 pages with 86 new color images
• Foreword by His Majesty King Norodom Sihamoni of Cambodia
• Extensive accounts of temples and pre-Angkor sites
• Profiles the Phnom Penh National Museum
• The hip town Siem Reap—the base for exploring Angkor
• Unique flora and fauna around the great lake, Tonle Sap
• 158 color photos, 44 maps & plans.

Casa Mexicana Style

Annie Kelly

Amazon Price: $26.40 List Price: $40.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: "Stewart, Tabori and Chang" Amazon Marketplace: 28 new & used starting at $19.77

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In 1521, when the Spanish arrived in Mexico, they were amazed at the spectacular architecture and complex urban planning they encountered in the great city of Tenochtitlán (modern-day Mexico City). To the native Mayan, Aztec, and Olmec traditions that had flourished throughout Mexico, the Spanish brought their own influences, resulting in an extraordinarily rich design heritage that survives to this day.

Acclaimed architectural photographer Tim Street-Porter vividly captures this enduring passion for design in Casa Mexicana Style, the follow-up to his best-selling Casa Mexicana (more than 100,000 copies sold). In this gorgeous new book featuring more than 250 photographs, Street-Porter takes us on an insider’s tour of 30 stunning homes, from urbane city apartments and modernist beach houses to stately rural haciendas and lovingly restored colonial townhouses.

All of the residences showcased here are enlivened by a natural blending of indoors and outdoors, a vibrant palette shaped by the sun-drenched surroundings, and an artful incorporation of the country’s celebrated crafts and handiwork. Whether large or small, historical or contemporary, Mexican houses are artistic statements, expressing the unique and inimitable lifestyle of their creators. Casa Mexicana Style is a welcoming invitation to bask in the beauty of these homes, to enjoy their charm and sophistication.

Out on the Porch Calendar 2009 (Wall Calendars)

Algonquin Books

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Editorial Review:

With over one million copies sold, the Out on the Porch calendar is a celebration of the good life. Of ice-cold lemonade on hot summer afternoons. Of the rhythmic thump-thump-thump of a beloved rocker. Of beautiful views and pure, put-up-your feet relaxation. For 2009, kick back on a dozen fantastic porches, porticoes, and verandas (in your imagination, at least). A charmingly rustic terrace in New York's Hudson Valley. A Bahamian porch swathed in green, pink, and yellow. And a sweeping Maine veranda with gorgeous ocean views. Photographs are accompanied by porch quotes from literature, and you can share the tranquility using the twelve full-color postcards included.

Andreas Gursky: Architecture

Ralf Beil, Aleida Assmann, Jan Assmann, Elisabeth Bronfen, Andreas Gursky

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

A Japanese power plant, dilapidated slums, the patterned facades of an apartment complex in Paris--in the work of German art photographer Andreas Gursky, born in 1955 in Leipzig, both private dwellings and the domains of industrial and political power are made into sometimes awe-inspiring and always overpowering forces of urban life. Gursky's signature mix of epic sweep and extreme detail is ideally suited to the portrayal of large-scale architecture, eliciting its most salient features: The capacity to dwarf, to impress, to alienate and to daunt. Where many of us will habitually blank out architectural environments which cannot be accommodated by the naked eye, Gursky's approach is to photograph them in order to render them comprehensible: "My preference for clear structures is the result of my desire, perhaps illusory, to keep track of things and maintain my grip on the world." Architecture is a collection of breathtaking images by the world-famous photographer, taken between 1988 and the present day, and treating all aspects of architectural structure, from the inside out. Each of the 75 color photographs is accompanied by commentary by renowned German authors Aleida Assmann, Jan Assmann, Elisabeth Bronfen, Sonja Fessel, Paul Nizon, Alfred Nordmann, Mirjam Schaub, Rudolf Schmitz, Monika Schmitz-Emans, Peter Schneemann and Thomas Zaunschirm. The resulting conjunction of text and image attractively demonstrates the depth and breadth of Gursky's concept of architecture.

The Most Beautiful Libraries in the World

Guillaume de Laubier, Laurel Hirsch (translator)

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Subjects -> Professional & Technical -> Architecture -> Building Types & Styles -> Specific Styles
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 11 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

All of the libraries in the world-whether small or large, public or private-serve the same purpose: to preserve, cherish, or show off the riches of human knowledge. Now, for the first time, an internationally renowned photographer takes the reader on a journey to more than 20 of the most historic of these magical places, all architectural treasures. From the dramatic, baroque Library of the Institut de France in Paris, to the splendid Vatican Library in Rome; from the majestic Royal Library in El Escorial, Spain, to the famed New York Public Library, a Beaux-Arts masterpiece-here are some of the most exquisite libraries of the Western world.

Included are national, scholarly, and religious libraries from 12 countries, which have in common a distinguished heritage and an architectural setting that emphasizes art and culture. The accompanying text traces the history of libraries to the present day, and describes how they came to serve famous personalities and men of letters. Libraries must be counted among civilization's crowning achievements; this elegant book is a fitting tribute to that accomplishment.

500 Bungalows

Amazon Price: $10.36 List Price: $12.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Taunton Amazon Marketplace: 39 new & used starting at $5.48

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Size Might Matter... 2 out of 5 stars.
14 of 16 people found this review helpful.

Wow... well I must say that I really feel "taken"!! Both Taunton Press and Keister have done excellent work in the past, so I did not think twice about purchasing the book... Unfortunately I did not pay attention to the SIZE! I fully expected this to be a picture book because that was how it was advertised. But I assumed it would be 8"x10" like similar Taunton publications. Did it do what it set out to do? Yes. It is a picture book about cottages. I did not expect the book to be 5" x 6" -- less than half the size of normal books. This is a "post card book". Buyer Beware-- This book is tiny!

Editorial Review:

Popularity meets affordability as America's favorite house style (according to a 2005 survey on About/Architecture.com) comes at a price point that every bungalow fan can afford. There is perennial interest in all things bungalow related. Every year there are numerous books, magazines and floor plans published that are all geared to the bungalow enthusiast. Taunton Press has published several bungalow-related books to great success including Bungalow Style and Updating Classic America: Bungalows. 500 Bungalows features an irresistible package at an incredible price, making this the perfect stocking stuffer or impulse buy.