The intention of this book is to furnish an -imaginary library" of some three thousand volumes in which a reasonably literate person can hope to find both instruction and inspiration, art and amusement. It was Andre Malraux who first coined the term "muse'e imaginaire" to describe the choice of the world's art which a man might make to furnish his own private museum. Modern printing, Malraux proceeded to argue, has actually made such a collection a practical possibility. Masterpieces which men of the eighteenth century and before had to travel to see are now within the reach of all who can afford a postcard or a newspaper supplement. Mechanical reproduction has removed art from the hands of the few and made it accessible to all. Printing has done the same for books: the paperback is scarcely more expensive than the fine art print.Our problem is no longer one of access; it is more likely to be one of choice. How are we to choose among the thousands of available titles? To enter a library is immediately to be seized by a kind of panic; one risks starving among such plenty. The confession that one does not know what to read next, or where to begin in an unfamiliar subject, is shameful in a society in which nobody wishes to be a beginner and where naivete is likely to earn the scorn accorded to all newcomers. This book seeks to be a kind of reader's ticket to that immense library which man (dedicated or venal, brilliant or dogged, wise or witty) has put together ever since he first began to leave a written record of his experiences and his opinions.
Our first notion was to supply lists of unadorned titles in each of the standard library categories. But to give no information about the books proposed would be to leave the reader in the bemused condition of a guest at a crowded party to whom the host has nothing more to say than "You know everybody here, of course". So we decided that it was essential to give a brief account of each recommended book, however laughable or superficial an authority might find it. We have tried to be as specific as possible in the information conveyed, in order to avoid the kind of Shorter Notice which once said of Ezra Pound's Cantos that some were good and some were bad.
The method we adopted, in order to make our cull, was to ask our collaborators (for whose generosity and learning we cannot say enough) to make lists in the categories in which they were expert. (The categories began as standard Dewey headings, but gradually shifted and changed to accommodate a wider range both of interests and of books. They are now perhaps arbitrary, but, we hope, comfortably commodious.) We limited our collaborators to a given number of books, though we recognized that this limitation, like giving only so many visas to a huge concourse of worthy people, was bound to lead to unhappy exclusions. Many good things found no place in our narrow lifeboat. In particular, we have excluded technical books accessible only to specialists: a necessary restriction, reflecting the inevitable distinction between a menu and a list of all available forms of nutriment. We then circulated the lists among friends and those who were willing to lend us their time, so that no single person was, in the end, exclusively responsible in any given department. (The editorial decision was, however, final. Acknowledgements our collaborators deserve; the blame is ours.) Mavericks and texts of perhaps marginal value thus scrambled their way aboard, sometimes at the expense of worthy work which more blandly covered similar ground. It is, therefore, no scandal not to find your favourite (or your own) book in these pages: we are not judging, though we have been obliged to choose.
This is in short, an imaginary library, not the imaginary library.
It can, and should, be supplemented by further reading and broader research. (We have indicated, wherever possible, books with informative bibliographies: often these will provide an ancillary or alternative list, the part thus standing for the whole.) If first publication leads to a sort of informed common pursuit whereby new volumes are proposed for future editions, something more interesting, more exciting, may well be on the way. As for how The List of Books can best be read, we propose no prescription. One may browse; one may plough. We have made the index a straightforward author index, trying to imagine who a frustrated reader might be looking for, rather than merely supplying a dutiful rehash of earlier material, in alphabetical and inverted order, Purists, For the satisfaction of. (For those who relish indexes, the wittiest we know is in C. D. Broad's Five Types of Ethical Theory.)
"They said it couldn't be done — and it couldn't" is a joke at least as old as George Jean Nathan. The last man who knew everything died at the end of the eighteenth century: he will never be replaced. The Tower of Babel is an example that should be enough to deter anyone who seeks to make a self-importantly impertinent edifice of human intelligence — but there is no evidence that the suburbs of Babel, with their rows of modest bungalows whose occupants are too timid to attempt a second floor, are man's happiest environment. In fact, the collation of these lists has been enough to pull down most people's vanity, and certainly ours; for the more one looks at what is available in an unfamiliar field, the more urgent the desire one feels to abandon the affectations of the editor and assume the modesty of the student. We hope to revise The List of Books every second year, and we shall be vigilant for new titles to add to it. The next edition will carry a section devoted to important additions, in each category, and we welcome (though we cannot promise always to acknowledge) suggestions — perhaps in the form of short reviews — for additions to these imaginary shelves.
F.R.; K.M.; London, 1980
The Editors and the Publishers would like to thank the following people without whose witty, wise and erudite contributions (ranging from suggestions and advice to complete reviews) this book would never have reached its present form.
Valerie Alderson; Brian Aldiss; John Alexander; Roger Baker; Georgina Battiscombe; Robert Benewick; Ruth Binney; Nikolaus Boulting; William Boyd; Michael Broadbent; Henry Brougham; R. Allen Brown; Sandy Carr; Jeremy Catto; John Clark; W. Owen Cole; Leo Cooper; Jane Cousins; Nona Coxhead; Sarah Culshaw; Marcus Cunliffe; D. C. Earl; G. R. Elton; Barry Fantoni; Antony Flew; Anthony Fothergill; Christopher Hale; Ragnhild Hatton; Tim Heald; Roger Hearn; Christopher Hill: Christopher Hird; Richard Hollis; Richard Holmes; Antony Hopkins; Philip Howard; Joel Hurstfield; Tom Hutchinson; Angela Jeffs; Emrys Jones; H. R. F. Keating; Brian Klug; Alan Knight; Eric Laithwaite; Peter Levi; Sir Bernard Lovell; John Lynch; Rosemary McLeish; Valerie McLeish; Sir Philip Magnus; Stephen Mennell; Peggy Miller; Patrick Moore; Michael Morris; Raymond Mortimer; John Nicholson; Robert Nye; John Paterson; Stewart Perowne; David Robinson; John Robinson; Sheila Rowbotham; Martin Sherwood; Maurice Shock; Paul Sidey; Tony Smith; Vernon Sproxton; John Stevenson; Brian Street; Jonathan Sumption; John Russell Taylor; Ion Trewin; J. C. Trewin; Lord Vaizey; Gwynne Vevers; Jonathan Walters; Colin Wilson
These lists cream the crop: one was compiled by the editors, the other by our American colleagues. By and large they represent some of the best, the most influential or most significant books published in each of our categories since 1970. Where books appear in both lists. we have left them there: duplication is an indication of one kind of specialness, at least.
Each editor was asked, independently, which twenty-five books he would pack for a desert island holiday. This list is the combined result. Several books were common choices; apart from them, each editor was surprised by several of the books on the other's list.
If books reflect historical, sociological and cultural growth, the ones recommended here may, we hope, help to account for or explain some of the directions human existence has taken in our century. Some of these books are dated, many are infuriating or partial; all are landmarks.
There is a place in most home libraries for a small collection of general reference books. We provide two basic lists, by no means mutually exclusive; one British and one American.
Every collection should contain a dictionary, such as The Concise Oxford English Dictionary or Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary, plus/or Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (P. Proctor) and The Complete Plain Words (Ernest Gowers).
Many people will also find a constant use for The Concise Dictionary of 26 Languages (compiled by Peter M. Bergman). Still concerned with words, the collection should contain The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations or The Penguin Dictionary of Quotations.
There should be an atlas, such as The Times Atlas of the World: Concise Edition or New Concise Atlas of the Earth, the indexes of which can be used as a world gazetteer. For annually updated information on world affairs get The Statesman's Year Book, Europa Year Book or Whitaker's Almanack.
For biographical information consult Who Did What (historical and international) and Who's Who (contemporary and British); much international coverage is provided by a good one-volume encyclopaedia such as Columbia Encyclopaedia or Hutchinson's New 20th Century Encyclopaedia. The historical aspect of recent developments is summarized in Chronology of the Modern World.
Finally, two useful books on general medical and legal matters: Reader's Digest Family Health Guide and Know Your Rights (neither, of course, is meant to supplement professional advice). In any case, every home should have a book on first aid, such as The Pocket Medical and First Aid Guide (Dr James Bevan).
Every collection should contain a dictionary, such as Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary (the second edition is the recommended unabridged version; the seventh is the desk edition) or The Random House College Dictionary.
The collection might also contain Roget's Thesaurus of Synonyms and Antonyms and Bartlett's Familiar Quotations.
There should be an atlas. Two good ones are The New York Times Atlas of the World and the Rand McNally New International Atlas, the indexes of which can be used as a world gazetteer. Annually updated information on world affairs is contained in The World Almanac and Book of Facts.
For biographical information consult Who's Who in America and Who's Who in the World. There is also a Who's Who for each state.
Two reliable encyclopaedias for home use are Encyclopaedia Britannica and The World Book Encyclopedia. An excellent one-volume encyclopaedia is The New Columbia Encyclopaedia.
Every home should have a book on first aid, such as Basic First Aid or Standard First and Personal Safety, both published by the American National Red Cross.
Also useful: Know Your Rights: A Guide to Everyday Law, by Ronald Irving and Charles Anthony.
Anthropology was born as a formal discipline in the 19th century, when a previously haphazard interest in the cultural and social behaviour of remote peoples was supplied with a theoretical basis and scientific procedures. At first it was very closely linked with its sister-subject sociology; both were concerned with man the organizer, with the forces and movements which mould human society. Gradually, however, the disciplines began to grow apart: sociology became ever more political (and analytically "scientific"), anthropology more historical (and descriptively "artistic"). The books in this list follow the bias towards study of the cultures of "primitive" peoples; but there are also representatives of a more modern trend towards treating man as a single phenomenon (with local and historical variants) and extrapolating from the techniques and discoveries of "primitive" anthropology a series of proposed solutions to the self-destructive energy of technological man. Once again the wheel has come full circle: sociology and anthropology go hand in hand, and their concern is social change. their scenario nothing less than the future of the human race itself.
See AUTOBIOGRAPHY (Mead); GEOGRAPHY (Forde, Sauer); HISTORY/AMERICAN (Josephy); HISTORY/BRITISH (Thomas); MATHEMATICS (Bronowski): MYTHOLOGY (Frazer. Kirk, Huxley, Levi-Strauss); RELIGION (Castaneda)
Agee, James and Evans, Walker Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941)
Study in words and photographs of three poor tenant families in the southern USA in 1936. Overpraised in its time, and the prose now seems self-consciously "poetic"; but the pictures especially are haunting, moving, devastating.
Agee, James. American, 1909-1955.
Asad, Talal (ed) Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter (1973)
A new generation of anthropologists turned on their teachers and accused them of compliance with colonialism. This collection of essays lays out their case.
Bailey, F. G. Stratagems and Spoils (1969)
Descriptions of the devious and clever ploys that men get up to in different societies in order to get the (differently defined) spoils. Also: Gifts and Poisons
Benedict, Ruth. American, 1887-1948.
Boas, Franz. The Mind of Primitive Man (1911)
One of the great revolutionary works (revised 1937); hard but essential. Boas was the first to proclaim that mankind is indissolubly one, and that all races have the potential to produce and create equally. The Nazis burned this book and civil rights activists everywhere bear it like a banner.
Boas, Franz. American, 1858-1942.
Bowen, E. S. Return to Laughter (1954)
Warm, amusing account of the everyday problems that an anthropologist encounters "in the field".
Chagnon, A. A. Yanomamo: The Fierce People (1977)
Aggression as a way of life. Text is as lively as the title; the sociological implications are wide and sharp. See Thrasher PSYCHOLOGY (Lorenz); SOCIOLOGY (Whyte)
Clarke, R. and Hindley, G. The Challenge of the Primitives (1975)
As the future of technological society grows ever more doubtful, some anthropologists are suggesting that a return to "primitive" concepts of kinship with nature may provide viable alternatives. This book readably and succinctly distils the essence of this hopeful philosophy.
Cohen, Abner. Two Dimensional Man (1974)
Accessible introduction to the thinking of anthropologists on symbolism, politics and their interrelationship.
Coon, C. S. and Hunt, E. E. The Living Races of Man (1965)
Authoritative study of the racial composition of all peoples of the world. Also: The Origin of Races; Seven Caves
Dalton, George Tribal and Peasant Economies (1976)
Accessible textbook on all aspects of social economics.
Dodds, E. R The Greeks and the Irrational (1951)
Seminal case-study of a society moving from "mythology" to "religion". Different approaches to the irrational world lead to different kinds of social behaviour; by studying these (and literature, philosophy, their embodiment) we discover the governing systems and beliefs of an ancient society. Sounds narrow; is stimulating, wide-ranging. See MYTHOLOGY (Harrison, Kirk, Slater)
Douglas, Mary Purity and Danger(1966)
Classic example of anthropologists' attempts to see meanings in the apparently trivial detail of everyday life — you'll never look at "dirt" in the same way again. Also: Rules and Meanings-, Natural Symbols
Douglas, Mary. English, 1921- .
Du Bois, W. E. B. American, 1868-1963.
Dumont, Louis Homo Hierarchichus (1966)
Class, caste, hierarchies in general — the enabling structures of society, or its main inhibitors? Clear, readable introduction.
Eisley, Loren The Immense Journey (1957)
Intense, poetic, unforgettable essays by a distinguished anthropologist who later published several volumes of poems. The title refers to the long journey of man, from the beginnings in the primordial ocean to today — and beyond?
Epstein, A. L Politics in an Urban African Community (1958)
Readable account of the changes brought to the 1950s Zambian copper belt by urbanization. Also: Ethos and Identity
Evans-Pritchard, E. E The Nuer (1940)
The classic text on fieldwork, studied by every student of anthropology. Also: Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande, etc
Frankenberg, IL Communities in Britain (1966)
Anthropologists' studies in Britain, of rural communities and of urban groups, neatly and usefully summarized.
Firer-Hahnendorff, Christoph von The Sherpas of Nepal (1964)
Readable field-study, a model of how such books can be made both authoritative and accessible to the general reader. Also: The Naked Na gas, etc
Geipel, John The Europeans (1969)
Ethno-historical survey of the various peoples of Europe: anthropology dominates, but archaeology, social history, linguistics and genetics are also brought into play. For modern Europeans — and immigrants to Newer Worlds — a fascinating study of how we came to be the way we are.
Gennep, Arnold van Rites of Passage (1977)
Points of transition in the development of an individual or a society are often traumatic, often accompanied by therapeutic or apotropaic ritual. A systematic study of such rituals in various primitive societies. See Mead.
Glob, P. V. Danish, 1911-1985.
Greenway, John Down among the Wild Men (1972)
Popular anthropology at its readable best: partly a witty autobiographical account of fifteen years' study of Old Stone Age aborigines in Australia, partly a scientific account of his findings and conclusions. Also: Literature among the Primitives; The Inevitable Americans; Ethnomusicology, etc
Gulliver, P. H Social Control in an African Society (1963)
Fascinating field-study, with important general implications. See Dumont.
Hall, E. T The Silent Language (1959)
Hall was one of the first to write about what has become a cliche — we communicate not by ordinary language alone, but also by "body language" and by other signals that are not expressed in words. A fascinating, essential book. See PSYCHOLOGY (Argyle)
Hanley, Gerald. Irish, 1916-1992.
Kitzinger, S Women as Mothers (1978)
Wide-ranging, well-written study of motherhood in different societies. Author's premise is that the "maternal instinct" does not exist as such; the role of mother varies as a direct response to the needs of society. Also: The Good Birth Guide. See PSYCHOLOGY (Rutter)
Kroeber, A. L Configurations of Culture Growth (1945)
An attempt by one of the most influential of 20th-century anthropologists to trace the growth and decline of human thought and art. Also: Anthropology (one of the first general texts in the field)
Kuper, Adam Anthropology and Anthropologists (1973)
Easy introduction to the history, personalities, events and ideas of 20th-century British anthropology.
Leach, Edmund Levi-Strauss (1970)
Useful introduction to the work of leading French anthropologist. Also: Political Systems of Highland Burma; Culture and Communication. See Levi-Strauss; MYTHOLOGY (Levi-Strauss)
Leiris, Michel. French, 1901-1990. Manhood. Rec: Bloom (anthropology)
Levi-Strauss, Claude The Elementary Structures of Kinship (1949)
One of the great 20th-century gurus in full flood: a study of kinship groups and their binding rituals throughout the world. Thorny style, but accessible with perseverance: he's a name to read as well as drop. Also: The Savage Mind, etc. See Leach; MYTHOLOGY
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. French, 1908- .
Lewis, L M Ecstatic Religion (1971)
Attempts to make sense of "strange" religious practices by looking at the problems of the social groups which carry them out. For a Christian view of the same area, see RELIGION (Davies). Also: An Introduction to Social Anthropology
Lienhardt, Godfrey. Divinity and Experience: The Religion of the Dinka (1961)
Fascinating attempt to explain another society's religion, with all the respect and complexity usually reserved for one's own. Also: Social Anthropology
Lisitzky, Gene. Four Ways of Being Human (1956)
Elegant survey of four "Stone Age" groups surviving, more or less unchanged, into the 20th-century: Eskimos, Hopi Indians, Maoris and Sepang of Malaya. Mixture of anthropology and social psychology (behaviour as identity) is successful and fascinating. See Mead.
Lloyd, P. Classes, Crises and Coups (1971)
Readable introduction to the study of modernizing societies and the political. economic and social problems they face. Also: Slums of Hope?: Shanty Towns of the Third World
Malinowski, B. Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922)
Account of the lives, trading, canoe-building and sailing of the inhabitants of the Trobriand Islands in the Western Pacific. One of the first and best examples of anthropological fieldwork. Also: The Sexual Life of Savages in North-Western Melanesia; Crime and Custom in Savage Society, etc
Mead, Margaret New Lives for Old (1956)
The Manu Tribe of Papua New Guinea collapsed cultural evolution: between 1928 and 1953 they moved from the Stone Age to the Air Age. Mead's book — typical of her wide-ranging generous scholarship — discusses the interweaving of old and new, the psychological effects of change; draws parallels with the general evolution of the rest of the human race. Also: Coming of Age in Samoa; Growing Up in New Guinea; Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies, etc. See Lisitzky; AUTOBIOGRAPHY; SOCIOLOGY
Mead, Margaret. American, 1901-1978.
Handy, E. S. Craighill and Elizabeth Green Handy. American, c.1893-1980 and 1921- .
Pocock, D.E. Understanding Social Anthropology (1976)
Excellent layman's introduction (with set essays for the eager). Also: Social Anthropology
Radin, Paul. Primitive Religion: Its Nature and Origin (1937)
Radin was a synthesizer of various strands in anthropology: economic and social structure, religion, philosophy, psychology. His books vary in importance; this is one of the best.
Sapir, Edward. Culture, Language and Personality (1961)
Collection of thoughtful essays by one of the great American cultural anthropologists and linguists.
Schapera, Isaac. Married Life in an African Tribe (1966)
Readable field-work study: specific tribal details lead to general conclusions about marriage as a binding agent in society. See Evans-Pritchard.
Steichen, Edward. American, 1879-1973. The Family of Man. Rec: LAT NYPL (photography series)
Street. B. V. The Savage in Literature (1975)
Amusing, relevant account of the image of other societies purveyed by popular 19th-century adventure novels.
Sutherland, A. (ed) Face Values (1978)
Glossy "pop" anthropology book based on a TV series set up by professional anthropologists. Later articles, however, are quite difficult. Also: Gypsies: The Hidden Americans
Thrasher, Frederic M. The Gang (1936)
Exhaustive, anthropological-sociological study of no less than 1,313 Chicago gangs. Stiff read; absorbing and disturbing. See SOCIOLOGY (Suttles)
Tiger, L. S. and Fox, R. The Imperial Animal (1971)
Challenging study of man's socially divisive and cohesive instincts: historical, anthropological and sociological disciplines luminously applied not to one small tribe, but to the whole human race.
Turner, V. W. The Forest of Symbols (1967)
Excellent example of anthropologists' attempts to understand the complex symbols of even the "simplest" peoples: reads, at times, like literary criticism. Also: The Ritual Process
Tylor, Edward B. Researches into the Early History of Mankind (1865)
Anthropology was once known, disparagingly, as "Mr Tylor's science". He was, to the history of what he first called "culture" (ie, the linguistic, psychic, emotional and material fabric of a society), what Darwin was to evolution. This book is a synthesis of his work — of absorbing interest, and still of unique value. Excellent abridged edition (1964) by Bohannan (himself a noted, and recommended, anthropologist).
Modern archaeology was born in 1708, with the first excavations at Pompeii. At first it was informal and irresponsible, little more than an aristocratic upgrading of the treasure-hunting and tomb-robbing characteristic of any historical period. In the 19th century it became badged with more serious, systematic study, the archaeologists seeking for information about ancient cultures as eagerly as for their glittering artefacts. The great names of 19th-century archaeology — Schliemann. Evans, Petrie — made their subject a true sibling of anthropology and cultural history, the passion of the polymath, and it is mainly their enthusiastic work which led to our century's obsession with the minutiae of ancient life. Archaeology continued as a genial, gentlemanly pursuit for inspired individualists until World War H. Since then, it has evolved (or declined) from an art to a science. The exactitudes of statistics, aerial photography (itself a legacy of 20th-century warfare), chemical analysis and other scientific disciplines are applied, and the results are, first, that archaeology now has areas as arcane and specialized as nuclear physics or X-ray crystallography, and second, that as our view of the distant past comes into ever sharper focus, we find it extraordinarily like our own: the notion of what -civilization" is travels further backwards in time, and wider in geography, with every newly published paper. Art or science? Amateur or specialist? The list covers books in both areas — and shades (like archaeology itself, one of the most humane of disciplines) into history and cultural anthropology too.
See ANTHROPOLOGY (Geipel); ART (Frankfort); CHILDREN'S BOOKS (Brothwell): GEOGRAPHY (Sauer); HISTORY/ANCIENT (Grant, Lehmann)
Bellwood, Peter. The Polynesians: Prehistory of an Island People(1978)
Until AD 1500 the Polynesians were one of the most widely spread ethnic groups on earth. Their origins, history, languages and way of life are examined in this pioneering survey. Also: Man's Conquest of the Pacific
Bishop, W. and Clark, J. D. (eds) The Background to Evolution in Africa (1967)
The origins of the human race. Outline of essential work, includes contributions from most of the leading workers in the field.
Bray, W. and Trump, D. H. A Dictionary of Archaeology (1970)
Convenient one-volume reference work. Covers the whole field of archaeology from human evolution and the prehistoric period to the civilizations of Egypt, the Near East and the Americas.
Brothwell, D. R. and Higgs, E. Science in Archaeology (1969)
"What the archaeologist is able to learn about the past depends to a great extent on the completeness and discrimination with which he avails himself of the resources being made available on an ever more generous scale by his colleagues in a growing range of scientific disciplines.- The important contributions of science to archaeology are discussed: professionals' version of Wilson (qv). See CHILDREN'S BOOKS
Ceram, C. W. Gods, Graves and Scholars (1951)
Popular approach is over-breathless for specialists, and the book (despite new editions) is dating fast. But it remains an outstanding enthusiasm-builder for would-be archaeologists. Also: The March of Archaeology, etc
Chadwick, John. The Mycenaean World (1976)
Terse, stimulating challenge to the orthodox view of Cretan prehistory by one of the pioneer code-breakers of Linear B.
Chang, Kwang-Chih. The Archaeology of Ancient China (1963)
Chinese civilization from its primitive farming beginnings (3rd millennium BC) to the early historic periods (2nd millennium AD). See FOOD; HISTORY/ASIAN (Eberhard, for later history)
Clark, Grahame. World Prehistory (1969)
Comprehensive introduction (regularly updated) to the intellectual, material and social progress of mankind. A suitcase of a book: everything you need is here. Also: Archaeology and Society
Coles, John. Archaeology by Experiment (1973)
Vivid insights into the past can be gained by reconstructing and testing models of ancient equipment. Revaluation of methods of food production, and of heavy and light industry. Unusual subject, expertly treated.
Cottrell, Leonard. The Land of Shinar (1965)
Sniffed at by narrower academics for his easy style, Cottrell is one of the great popularizers of archaeology. This book deals with Sumeria, the possible site of the Garden of Eden, a "lost" culture as full of vitality as Egypt or Persia. Also: Lost Cities; The Bull of Minos, etc
Cunliffe, Barry. Fishbourne (1971)
Cunliffe's account of the dig at the Roman villa, Fishbourne, England, is a fine case-study of the modern archaeologist at work, balancing trowel and brush against sophisticated laboratory techniques.
Daniel, Glyn. 150 Years of Archaeology (1950)
Standard introductory textbook; should be followed by Wilson (qv) or by Brothwell and Higgs (qv) for accounts of up-to-date methodology.
Deuel, Leo. Conquistadors without Swords (1967)
Narration of archaeological discovery in the Americas, interleaved with extensive, lively quotations from the archaeologists' own accounts. Also: The Treasures of Time (ancient Near East revealed in the same enthralling way)
Frere, Sheppard. Britannia (1967)
History of Roman Britain, from archaeological evidence. Ponderous style never entirely engulfs the author's enthusiasm or the fascination of the subject.
Hawkes, Jacquetta. The World of the Past (1963)
Excellent anthology of Hawkes' lively, expert articles and other smaller writings. Also: Dawn of the Gods, etc
Hume, Ivor. Historical Archaeology (1969)
Application of archaeological disciplines to a known historical period: colonial America. Good specialist book, of interest to the layman attracted by the period or by the unusual conjunction of disciplines.
Keating, Rex. Nubian Rescue (1975)
The building of the Aswan Dam in the 1950s and 1960s led to unprecedented archaeological activity in Nubia, "Middle Egypt", in ancient times the corridor between Mediterranean and African civilizations. This book is a clear, if rather plainly written, summary of spectacular "rescue archaeology" (dig before the water comes).
Leone, Mark (ed). Contemporary Archaeology (1972)
Discusses the controversy surrounding the theories and aims of the "new archaeology", with particular reference to North America. Polemical; hard; engrossing.
Libby, W.F. Radiocarbon Dating (1955)
MacKendrick, Paul. The Greek Stones Speak (1962)
Elegant, stylish: ancient culture revealed by trowel. In its time, unrivalled for enthusiastic clarity; still an excellent general introduction. Updated edition badly needed — it's too good to lose. Also: The Mute Stones Speak (a less dated, but also less exciting, account of Italian archaeology)
Mulvaney, D. J. The Prehistory of Australia (1969)
Aborigines. Neglected topic, expertly outlined.
Negev, Avraham (ed). Archaeological Encyclopaedia of the Holy Land (1972)
Oates, D. and J. The Rise of Civilization (1976)
Early agriculture; the first domestication of animals during the Neolithic period; the rise of urbanization in Mesopotamia and Egypt. Characteristic volume in recommendable Making of the Past series.
Phillipson, D. W. The Later Prehistory of Eastern and Southern Africa (1977)
Piggott, Stuart. Ancient Europe: A Survey (1965)
European prehistory from the beginnings of agriculture to Classical antiquity. The parallel development of barbarian cultures with the civilizations of antiquity, clearly explained and ably illustrated.
Raistrick, Arthur. Industrial Archaeology (1972)
Sandars, Nancy K. Prehistoric Art in Europe (1968)
Superb volume from recommended Pelican History of Art series. See MYTHOLOGY
Ucko, P. J. and Dimbleby, G. W. (eds). The Domestication and Exploitation of Plants and Animals (1969)
Analysis of innovatory collaboration between archaeologists and natural scientists, to their mutual benefit and enlightenment. Also: Man, Settlement and Urbanism
Willey, Gordon. An Introduction to American Archaeology (2 vols, 1966-71)
Wilson, David. Atoms of Time Past (1975)
Up-to-date history, for the general reader, of the use of scientific techniques in archaeology: bones and shards treated with laboratory procedures as well as inspired individual guesswork. Notably clear, informative style.
Architecture is, in a real sense, the measure of man's unnaturalness. Ever since he adapted the cave for his convenience, he has rebelled against the kind of shelter which unshaped nature provides. Thus the history of architecture is that of man against nature, however naturally he has sought to harmonize his antagonism with the materials and environment he finds on earth. The story of architecture is told (and lived) principally by urban man. for whom buildings become the reflection of society, its organization and its myths. This means that the debate on architectural aesthetics is also about morals. politics, religion: hence its intense importance, its furious partialities. ("You say," said Nietzsche, "that there can be no argument about matters of taste? All life is an argument about matters of taste.") The architect makes his artistic and concrete statement — in obstinately durable form — and then moves on, sometimes with giant strides, sometimes on feet of clay, rarely leaving satisfactory explanation or justification. Vitruvius and Le Corbusier, in the following list, are distinguished exceptions (and prove, perhaps, the dangers of universalizing assertions. however impressive the credentials of the dogmatists). The majority of books cited here are by critics and scholars, though the true critic of the building is often and decisively the man who uses it. In the present century, however, the architectural critic has become an influential and creative force. Architecture is three-dimensional thought: hence the significance of the "philosophers" who are its critics and proponents.
See ART (Frankfort, Giedion, Pevsner, Stedman): CHILDREN'S BOOKS (Macaulay); GEOGRAPHY (Hall, Jacobs, Morgan, Pahl. Scientific American, Tunnard): HISTORY/BRITISH (Brown)
Alexander, Christopher. American, 1936- . A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction. Rec: Counterpunch NF Utne
Bachelard, Gaston. French, 1884-1962. The Poetics of Space. Rec: Counterpunch Trans
This is a deep, magical, densely captivating book about space, our homes, how we live in them, and how dwellings and space affect us; it is as much a book of philosophy as a work of serious literature. It requires careful, preferably leisurely reading, with the possibility of moments to pause and digest and re-read the words. It will change the way you look at your home and your life, providing a deeper, more insightful relationship with the spaces you occupy.
Banham, Reyner. Theory and Design in the First Machine Age (1960)
Theories which complemented architecture and design, 1900-40, when architects and designers really tried to come to terms with the potential of industry and science. Banham's tone here, as always, is clear, fervent, readable. Leads usefully to Jencks (qv) and Newman(qv): the seeds are planted here. Also: The Architecture of the Well-Tempered Environment; Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies; A Guide to Modern Architecture, etc
Boethius, A. and Ward-Perkins, J. Etruscan and Roman Architecture (1970)
Like most others in the Pelican History of Art series, competent and authoritative. No light read; but text, illustrations, exhaustive footnotes and detailed bibliography cover ground from 1400 Bc to the decline of Rome.
Burnham, D. H. and Bennett, E. H. Plan of Chicago (1909)
By 1900 the Chicago School, led by Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright, had established the city as the home of modern urban architecture. Burnham and Bennett's famous plan for the further development of the city was adopted in 1909; its lineaments may still be seen in the magnificent lakefront and other glories. Chapter 8 summarizes the plan.
Clark, Kenneth. The Gothic Revival (1928)
The impetuous pioneer piece on the survival and revival of Gothic architecture, from the Dissolution of the Monasteries to full-blooded Victorian Revivalist styles. Depicts beautifully the interaction between literature, painting, architecture and landscape gardening, as Clark contrasts 18th- and 19-century concepts of "taste". See ART; AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Clifton-Taylor, Alec. The Pattern of English Building (1960)
Lateral approach to architectural history; deals less with the development of "great styles" than with the close relationship between geology and traditional building materials, topography and the building types which characterize England's architecture.
Collins, Peter. Architectural Judgement (1971)
P J Collins asks not about our response to buildings but why, in "their professional judgement", architects, planners and developers choose one building rather than another. For believers in absolute aesthetic standards, an essential antidote. Also: Changing Ideals in Modern Architecture, 1750 - 1950
Colvin, Howard. A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects, 1660-1840 (1954)
Conant, Kenneth. Carolingian and Romanesque Architecture, 800-1200 (1959)
Downing, A. J. Rural Essays (1853)
Downing designed many fine homes and gardens, but was especially intrigued by American "cottage architecture" — the homely constructions, often home-made, of the lower middle class; country churches, county courthouses and the like. His book makes for nostalgic imaginings. See Kouwenhoven.
Fleming, J., Honour, H. and Pevsner, N. Penguin Dictionary of Architecture (1966)
Basic guide to architects, architectural terms, building materials, ornamentation, styles and movements. See Pevsner; ART (Honour, Pevsner)
Frankl, Paul. Gothic Architecture (1962)
Detailed analysis of style and structure; a good introduction, despite Frankl's insistence on divorcing architecture from sculpture, stained glass, etc, at a time when unity of the arts was of the essence.
Giedion, Sigfried. Space, Time and Architecture: The Growth of a New Tradition (1941)
Polemical, path-finding book succeeds admirably in placing architecture, construction and city planning of the industrial era (mid 18th century onwards) in the wider context of art and science. See ART
Gropius, Walter. The Scope of Total Architecture (1955)
Testament and manifesto of Bauhaus founder: "the approach to any kind of design, a chair, a building, a whole town or a regional plan, should be essentially identical."
Harvey, John. The Master Builders: Architecture in the Middle Ages (1971)
Also: The Gothic World, 1100-1600, The Medieval Architect; Cathedrals of England and Wales
Despite limited illustrations, an excellent summary of 19th- and 20th-century European, British and American architecture. Also: Modern Architecture in England; Rococo Architecture in Southern Germany
Jencks, Charles. The Language of Post-Modern Architecture (1977)
Stimulating analysis of recent trends. Useful adjunct to the more theoretical writings of such men as Venturi (qv); a literate, often witty guide. Also: Modern Movements in Architecture
Kouwenhoven, John. Made in America (1948)
Readable examination, by a literary critic, of what he calls American "vernacular art" — the unselfconscious art of the "carpenter builders" who shaped the country's aesthetic sense. See Downing.
Lancaster, Osbert. A Cartoon History of Architecture (1975)
Lancaster a true caricaturist: drawings pinpoint subject; waspish comments make equally vivid impact. "Wimbledon Transitional", "Stockbroker Tudor", "Bypass Variegated" — all begin here. Lancaster was a famous cartoonist who also wrote for the Architectural Review for many years. His eye for detail and dry wit make this a both amusing and highly insightful guide to the vagaries of taste.
Lawrence, Arnold. Greek Architecture (1957)
Authoritative, scholarly text; detailed footnotes and bibliography; essential.
Le Corbusier. Towards an Architecture (1923)
Designer-in-chief of 20th-century city-scape, with its straight lines, cubes, glass, concrete and steel, Le Corbusier has had incalculable, perhaps undue, influence; his writings remain crucial to an understanding of modern urban life. Also: Five Points of a New Architecture, etc
Loos, Adolf. Austrian, 1870-1933.
Jill Lever and John Harris. Illustrated History of Architecture 800-1914 (1993)
First published in 1966 as the illustrated Glossary of Architecture. The effectiveness of this dictionary derives from the way the authors have combined clearly written definitions of key terms with a remarkable collection of photographs with which to illustrate them.
Mumford, Lewis (ed). Roots of Contemporary American Architecture (1956)
Using original documents, Mumford analyses the intellectual germination of architecture in pre-Chicago America and the evolution of indigenous 20th-century styles. Contrast of quotations from architects — like Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Sullivan — and critics (Mumford and others) is particularly stimulating. Also: The City in History, etc. See ART
Murray, Peter. The Architecture of the Italian Renaissance (1963)
Readable, scholarly; useful luggage for travellers. Also: A History of English Architecture; Piranesi and the Grandeur of Ancient Rome; A History of World Art
Newman, Oscar. Defensible Space: People and Design in the Violent City (1972)
Influential in promoting the view that architecture should be based on the study of people's psychological needs (eg for privacy, contact, security). Essential sociological balance for the theories of (for example) Le Corbusier (qv).
Norberg-Schulz, Christian. Meaning in Western Architecture (1976)
Respected history of architecture, with strong theoretical bias; demanding, but usefully comprehensive.
Palladio, Andrea. Four Books on Architecture (1570)
Treatise on Classical architecture; possibly the most influential pattern-book ever published. Need not be read, but should be perused, the pages turned, designs and drawings studied; they appear, repeated endlessly, on every "Classical" building in the Western world. For analysis, see Wittkower's Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism
Pevsner, Nikolaus. An Outline of European Architecture (1942)
In this and numerous other books, Pevsner revolutionized British attitudes towards architecture. The latest edition performs the same service in an American "Postscript". A confident sweep through Western (including American) architecture: Pevsner's slightly awkward prose style persuades through its passion and its directness. Also: The Buildings of England (series); Essays on Art, Architecture and Design; A History of Building Types, etc. See Fleming; ART
Ramsey, Charles George. American, 1884-1963.
Rapoport, Amos. House Form and Culture (1969)
This fascinating volume associates the forms of domestic architecture with the cultures that surround and influence them.
Rasmussen, Steen Eiler. Experiencing Architecture (1959)
A refreshingly clear and unpretentious approach that concentrates on the many different ways of perceiving architectural forms: as an interplay of solids and voids, as a succession of rhythmic patterns, and even in terms of the acoustical character of buildings.
Richards, James. An Introduction to Modern Architecture (1940)
Recent history is often less digestible than the study of dead civilizations. Modern architecture is no exception; even so this book persuasively argues that architecture is a social art related to 20th-century life rather than (in the author's own words) an "academic exercise in applied ornament". Usefully read in conjunction with Giedion (qv), Mumford (qv), and Newman (qv). Also: The Anti-Rationalists; The Castles on the Ground; The Functional Tradition in Industrial Building
Richards, James (ed). Who's Who in Architecture: From 1400 to the Present Day (1977)
Biographical and critical studies of professional architects from Alberti and Brunelleschi onwards. Comprehensive coverage of architects of the Western world, including the USA and Latin America; new edition adds names from Israel, Africa and the Far East.
Ruskin, John. The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849)
Though Ruskin himself later called it "a wretched rant", this book, together with Pugin's and Morris's writings, really paved the way for modern architectural history and criticism, laying down criteria by which to judge buildings which were not simply those of Vitruvius or Alberti dressed up in 18th-century tasteful finery. A founding father, Ruskin writes with grace as well as passion, and puts forward an eloquent case, among other things for the preservation of historic buildings. Also: The Stones of Venice. See LITERARY CRITICISM
Ruskin, John. The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849)
A highly idiosyncratic look at the fundamentals of architecture. Ruskin's high moral tone and sometimes eccentric opinions will not appeal to everyone but, after nearly 150 years, he is still worth reading for the poetic vigour of his prose style and the brilliance of his observations.
Scott, Geoffrey The Architecture of Humanism (1914)
furious attack on 19th- and early-20th-century "practicality" and a compelling psychological defence of the ornate forms of the baroque. Looking back, 60 years on, how right Scott was!
Scully, Vincent. American, 1920- .
Smith, E. Baldwin The Dome (1950)
Smith has written several books, each treating a specific architectural feature which appears over large areas of the earth. This book is one of the best of them.
Soper, A. and Sickman, L. The Art and Architecture of China (1956)
From earliest times, traditionalism and resistance to change characterize Chinese architecture: an interesting contrast with the fashionable, ever-changing styles of the West. Also: The Art and Architecture of Japan
Summerson, John The Classical Language of Architecture (1964)
Despite pockets of Gothic resistance, Classical architecture has dominated the "civilized" world from the Renaissance to the present century. Summerson explains its grammatical disciplines for expert and layman alike. His purpose is to make us think critically about, instead of just gazing at, architecture. Useful glossary of architectural terms. Also: Georgian London; Victorian Architecture: Four Studies in Evaluation; Inigo Jones; Architecture in Britain, 1530-1830, etc
Venturi, Robert Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (1977)
In the late 20th century, architecture is evolving from "modernism", the human dimension reasserting itself. Seminal text by a leading US practitioner. Usefully read in conjunction with Jencks (qv).
Vitruvius On Architecture (43 BC)
Fascinating contemporary analysis of Classical architecture, including discussion of materials for building and decorating, and even of the design of catapults and "tortoises" (early tanks). Particularly influential in the Renaissance. Good translation: Loeb Library.
Wright, Frank Lloyd Modern Architecture (1931)
As important for America as Le Corbusier (qv) was for France and Gropius (qv) for Germany, Wright in this famous book states with the passion that imbued all his work the principles of his very personal architecture. Also: When Democracy Builds. etc. See Mumford.
Wright, Frank Lloyd. American, 1867-1959.
Laurie Olin is a professor of landscape architecture at Harvard's Graduate School of Design. He teaches a landscape-design studio and lectures on the history and evolution of landscapes. He has received Guggenheim and Rome Prize Fellowships for study in landscape architecture; which he has taught at the University of Washington, the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard. He is a founding partner of Hanna/Olin Ltd., a landscape-architectural firm located in Philadelphia.
These books should dispel either of two notions: the first that the world and our society are fixed or complete, and the second that any particular current trend is destiny. Things can and must change, but to a surprising degree such change can be shaped by dreams and design just as it can by chance or the forces currently at work in society.
Rolling C. Rolling. Tree in the Trail. (1942)
Of all the books from childhood, I place this one ahead of Winnie the Pooh, Alice, The Leather-stocking Tales, and so on (which are better literature), because it gave an exciting history of a place. The protagonist was a cottonwood tree that witnessed three hundred years of American evolution from buffalo herds and Indian migrations through the exploration and settling of the West by European immigrants. It opened my eyes at age eight to social and ecological history. The elegant drawings, paintings and maps on every page conveyed as much or more content as the text, another lesson that shaped my future self-expression.
Frank Lloyd Wright. An American Architecture. Edgar Kaufmann, ed. (1955)
One of the several books about Frank Lloyd Wright's work. As a young architecture student I found this book was truly an inspiration. The clear exposition of Wright's ideas concerning the relationship between buildings and society, between structure and form, between ornament and materials, and his attitudes toward society, work and art opened up the possibilities of architecture and imagination.
Loren C. Eiseley. The Immense Journey (1957)
The first and possibly the best of his many books. More than Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, which came later, this collection of essays explicated an ecological point of view to which I still aspire. Eiseley follows Thoreau as one who presents the longer view of man as a part of nature, who struggles with this truth and the beauty of evolution and its unfinished workings and experiments.
Theodore Roethke. Words for the Wind (1957)
The third volume of poetry published by one of the most influential teachers I ever had. Roethke introduced me to all the modern poets as well as to the seventeenth-century metaphysical ones, but it was in the close reading of his work that I began to see how one of my own contemporaries could make art from a living language. using material from his own experience and mine, and give it form based upon classical and historical precedents. It was intelligent, passionate and beautiful. More importantly, like William Carlos Williams and Wallace Stevens, the two American poets I came to value the most, his poetry seemed always fresh and to admonish you to "change your life."
W. G. Hoskins. The Making of the English Landscape (1970)
This deceptively concise and readable book by the current preeminent cultural geographer of Britain led me to spend several years of my life involved in the study of the evolution of landscapes in Europe and Britain. It also led me to classical archaeology, to the history of settlement patterns and agriculture, to the persistence of archetypes and themes in the design of gardens and parks, and finally to make comparisons and connections between social, ecological and artistic history and theory. More importantly, it led me to want both to share such views with others through teaching and to add my contribution to the palimpsest of design on the land.
Certain historic comic strips and movies were equally important to my drawing and graphic development.
Moshe Safdie is an internationally known architect and urban designer with a practice in Montreal, Cambridge, Massachusetts and Jerusalem. He has been director of Harvard's Urban Design Program of the Graduate School of Design and is the Ian Woodner Professor of Architecture and Urban Design. He has written three books: Beyond Habitat, For Everyone a Garden and Form and Purpose. In addition to lecturing frequently at conferences and on campuses, his current projects range from the Montilla business district in Jerusalem to the Montreal waterfront, a Hebrew school in Mexico City, housing in the Republic of Singapore, the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa and Columbus Circle in New York City.
By definition, an architect's principal source of inspiration and learning is the study of the visual environment, cities and buildings, observed in reality and in reproductions of drawings and photographs. The architect's eye is a greater scanner sorting out relevancies, perceived and hidden orders, organization and patterns. The written word coexists as stimulation with the image.
I have chosen three books. The impact of the first has been to place my consciousness within an ethical and moral framework. The second is a book of science that connects the body theory of design to a greater universal context. The third is a book specifically about architecture and cities, to give particular emphasis to the significance of one set of images and experiences over others.
The Bible. King James version. Book of Job (1611)
The first book is the Book of Job and, in particular, its entirety but for the last four chapters. Job's starting point is the comfortable world where virtue is rewarded, evil punished. Through a series of devastating experiences this simple construct falls apart. Seeking virtue cannot be pursued for want of immediate rewards in this life, nor for Job (as for myself) does the promise of a reward in an afterlife form a part of his consciousness. Invariably there must be other motives to seek virtue. It comes down to the fundamental level of acting in a way that, when multiplied into the collective behavior of all humanity, makes this planet a livable, comfortable place to be. It builds upon the ancient Hebrew saying "Thou shall not do unto others . . ." as a more elementary construct for one's personal morality than the crime-and-punishment constructs that followed, aiming to control a fundamentally aggressive and selfish humanity. And though the last four chapters (considered by many scholars to have been added later) soften the message, as God repents and rewards Job in this life upon the earth, I've always remained with the lamentation of Job's dilemma and the conviction that what must govern my ethical base and morality as an architect and as an individual must rest upon a vision of my own behavior and actions being multiplied to the infinity of collective behavior and its impact upon the species.
Sir D'Arcy W. Thompson. On Growth and Form (1917)
Architects trained through the tradition of art history tend to think of architecture as a series of culturally based developments, buildings and cities shaped by behavioral and psychic forces, styles evolving from one generation to the other shaped primarily by the will of human beings. D'Arcy Thompson's On Growth and Form, published in 1917, which laid the foundation for the science of morphology, has reshaped my understanding of the process and meaning of design. Introduced to the book by Louis Kahn and Ann Tyng at age twenty-three, I came to appreciate the inseparable connection between design by nature and design by man. What Thompson had proposed and demonstrated was that the forms or organisms in nature, from the simplest to the most complex, evolved in the Darwinian sense to satisfy the criteria essential to survival. From the overused example of the Nautilus shell to the more subtle demonstrations in the shapes of various plants; sea, land and air, fauna and flora, the bond structure of the vulture's wing; the geometry of leaves of plants in the desert and the tundra, Thompson forever seeks and demonstrates the connection of form to purpose.
It becomes possible to distinguish those developments in architecture and urbanism rooted in purpose, in the constraints of the physical environment, of materials and place, and of life-style from those capricious and arbitrary explorations that surely must have occurred in every age and engaged the builders of every period. It is in the nature of the human psyche to explore with the same certainty that molecules and cells mutate and, in the long run, the history of architecture sorts out the explorations worthy of survival and repetition from those destined to become dead ends.
If before D'Arcy Thompson I might have conceived the act of design as shaping in one's own image, after Thompson I was conscious that form must evolve from the deep understanding and response to the physical and psychological structures and constraints that shape our environment in a similar even though more complex manner as in morphology.
Bernard Rudofsky. Architecture Without Architects (1964)
With Thompson absorbed it was natural to seek in architecture that mode of building which most closely approximates morphology in the linkage between form and purpose. The third book, Bernard Rudofsky's Architecture Without Architects, really an exhibition catalog, is more in the tradition of architectural picture books. At a time that in our culture the architect reigned supreme as form-giver — the one to give shape not only to buildings and cities, but to society itself — Rudofsky cried out that the emperor was naked. Illustrating buildings and villages designed by nonarchitects, untrained human beings building "in the vernacular," he demonstrated a world of immense beauty and complexity and, like D'Arcy Thompson, made the connection showing how a particular form evolved in response to the inventive use of available technologies and materials, of site and climate, where decoration emerged from myth and ritual, where efficiency, in the morphological sense, begets a sense of order, fitness and, perhaps most relevantly, spiritual uplift.
Rudofsky establishes criteria that transcend the standard fare of art-history evaluations, suggesting the greater and more fundamental measure from which no architect should attempt to escape. In an art world that proclaims that all is possible, D'Arcy Thompson and Rudofsky suggest that the search is not for that which is possible, an infinity of choices, but for that which is appropriate, a diminishing set of choices in search of truth.
Anne Whiston Spirn is associate professor of landscape architecture at Harvard's Graduate School of Design. Her research and publications grow out of her work on theories of nature and city design, best illustrated in her recent award-winning book The Granite Garden: Urban Nature and Human Design. She was a fellow of the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe in 1978 and a Noyes fellow in 1985. She holds a B.A. from Radcliffe College and a M.L.A. from the University of Pennsylvania.
It was only after writing these notes that I realized that all five of the books are in one way or another a product of Harvard. Eliot was an undergraduate at Harvard College, McHarg and Alexander studied at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and John Dewey delivered Art as Experience as a Harvard lecture series founded in memory of William James.
Thomas Stearns Eliot. Four Quartets (1935-42)
I bought my first copy of the Four Quartets in a bookstore in Copenhagen. I was sixteen, living for a year on a farm and going to school in Denmark. The Four Quartets was one of a handful of books in English that I read and reread. At first these books were a linguistic refuge, the still center in a storm of unfamiliar words. Later, when Danish became a comfortable everyday language, the words of the poems acquired a newness, as if heard for the first time. Eliot's use of the garden as metaphor, his juxtaposition of nature's time and human time, struck a deep resonance. I was a city girl (suburban, really) exposed for the first time to the violent vicissitudes of nature and a life founded on nature's rhythms as well as man's. Over the past twenty years, I have returned to the Four Quartets again and again. They drive me to find a way to design landscapes that embody time past, time present, and time future, that highlight the poignant contrast between nature's time and human time.
John Dewey. Art as Experience (1934)
I first read Art as Experience as a Radcliffe undergraduate struggling to strike a balance between art and scholarship. I had meant to major in painting, only to find upon arrival that in Harvard's fine-arts department, one studied the history of art, not its making. The idea that aesthetic experience was not the special property of an educated elite, but was knowable, an important and universal human phenomenon engaging the senses and capable of being experienced on many different levels, was attractive. By sketching an aesthetic theory that related to everyday experience as well as to extraordinary moments, Dewey constructed a bridge for me between the making of art and its history, between high art and craft. This has since defined my own approach to the aesthetics of design, one that is grounded in both sensual experience and intellectual meaning.
Ian L. McHarg. Design with Nature (1969)
Design with Nature introduced me to my profession. Through this book, I learned that landscape architecture consisted of more than the design of gardens, that it extended to the park, the parkway, the region. Through this profession I hoped to create "useful" art and thereby to fuse the poetic imagery of Eliot and the pragmatic aesthetic of Dewey. I subsequently studied landscape architecture with McHarg at the University of Pennsylvania and later worked for five years in his professional office on a wide variety of planning and design projects. These projects ranged in scope from a study of an entire metropolitan region to portions of cities, from plans for new communities to park designs. In the office, I gained a different appreciation for the book: for its power to shape values and to create the demand for a particular type of professional practice. Design With Nature demonstrated for me the potential of a book to change the way the environment is perceived and built. But McHarg neglected the city, and that was the seed for my own book.
Christopher Alexander et al.
These two books stand for me as one. As a graduate student in landscape architecture, the first provided a theoretical frame and the second the application that made the theory comprehensible and meaningful. Alexander's work opened up new worlds for me. As a visually oriented person trained in a highly verbal educational tradition, I found that the diagrams in Multi-Service Centers packed a jolt in the way they fused abstract ideas, empirical data, and physical form. A door opened: this was a language that seemed more native to me than words. Alexander also dispelled the mystique of design: he highlighted a framework within which the real mystery — the flash of insight that illuminates a meaningful pattern — was facilitated.
Architecture is unique among the arts, in as much as it is impossible to avoid. From birth to death, the spaces that surround us are largely defined by structures — walls, doors, windows, corridors — that have been consciously designed and built, albeit with varying degrees of finesse. The very ubiquity of architecture leads most people to take it for granted. It usually enters our awareness only for the most negative reasons: the destruction of something familiar and well loved, or the arrival of something else that seems incongruous or out of scale. The experience of architecture can be much more rewarding than this, and the following books have been chosen because all the authors, in their varying ways, have the ability to make the act of looking at the build environment seem like an active and creative process, an act of interpretation as much as one of contemplation.
All find architectural values are human values, else not valuable. —Frank Lloyd Wright
The rebuilding of the east end of the abbey church of St Denis, just north of Paris, was begun in 1140. It took just four years and is widely regarded as the first consistent manifestation of Gothic architecture. It was rapidly followed by similar building and rebuilding programmes across the Isle de France, then in England, and eventually throughout Europe. The vital elements of Gothic building - the pointed arch, the rib vault, and the flying buttress - all enabled the medieval master builder to replace the solid but earthbound architecture of the Romanesque with something more dynamic and transcendent. Walls, no longer load-bearing, could be filled with windows of coloured glass, creating - as at Chartres - a jewel-like glow within the often vast interiors. The Gothic cathedral dominated the surrounding landscape and the lives of those within it, so it is hardly surprising that subsequent architectural history has concentrated on ecclesiastical buildings almost entirely at the expense of secular ones.
Gothic is not only the best, but the only rational architecture, as being that which can fit itself most easily to all services, vulgar or noble ... it can shrink into a turret, expand into a hall, coil into a staircase, or spring into a spire, with undegraded grace and unexhausted energy. —John Ruskin
The study of architecture reflects, perhaps more than any other art form, the prevailing aesthetic tastes of a period. The Renaissance is no exception, the rebirth of Classical ideas on form, proportion, and decoration, as found in the remains of ancient Greece and Rome, providing inspirarion for such major architectural masters as Leon Battista Alberti, Filippo Brunelleschi, and Michelangelo. Baroque architecture, however, reflects the penchant of the time towards lavish decorative schemes on a grand scale, the simplicity and clarity of the Classical giving way to the love of complexity and dramatic effects.
He departed not a little from the work regulated by measure, order and rule which other men did according to a common use and after Vitruvius and the antiquities, to which he would not conform ... —Giorgio Vasari on the Architecture of Michelangelo
From the middle of the 18th century, as much as the other aspects of culture, architecture was affected by ideas of the Enlightenment and significant changes that were taking place in the political structures of certain nations, the most significant of these being the French and American Revolutions. Architecture became influenced by contemporary philosophy, in its ideas about nature and society, and the conflict between empiricism and rationalism. Change in conceptions of history, and archaeological expeditions to cultivate the examination of Roman and Greek architecture, led to the questioning of Vitruvius' Classical precepts and the singular route presented by Renaissance and Baroque. It also resulted in the development of Neo-Classicism.
In the 19th century, the Industrial Revolution presented architecture with new approaches to development, as a result of both mass increases in production and technological innovation. Enlarged urban development and, in the densely occupied cities, the need to install comprehensive servicing systems, such as the provision of drainage and water, as well as advances in mobility and communication, led to strategic planning, which produced both structured urban designs and, in the latter part of the century, suburbanization. The rise of the new bourgeois classes in cities generated places of leisure and consumption: new parks marked the urbanization of landscape, and technological advancement made possible the construction of the arcade.
Technical innovation from the middle of the 18th century, which included the development of iron as a structural material and the birth of the steam engine, encouraged a division in the roles of the engineer and the architect. The new materials and techniques of construction presented multiple rather than singular solutions to design projects. This presaged 20th-century diversity. Advances in the production of power, leading, for example, to the invention of the lift and the electric light, resulted not only in more ambitious constructions, but in architecture as a more sophisticated means of tempering the environment, which might respond to individual need while expressing changes in society.
Unremittingly science enriches itself and life with newly discovered useful
materials and natural powers that work miracles, with new methods and
techniques, with new tools and machines. It is already evident that inventions
no longer are, as they had been in earlier times, means for warding off want
and for helping consumption; instead, want and consumption are the means
to market the inventions. The order of things has been reversed. —Gottfried Semper
The history of modem architecture could be described as a history of ideas, in which the apparent divergence of approaches, and the number of movements, in contrast to previous centuries, resulted from the wide range of possibilities made available by new technologies. This not only made architects address different methods of construction, but also the social effects of their buildings, individually and collectively, in shaping and reflecting the way people live in the modem age. Architects such as Le Corbusier projected visions of whole conurbations and environments to support the new social structures that they envisioned.
It is hard to be precise in attempting to trace the start of modem architecture when one considers both its technological and its visionary characteristics.
In one sense its origin may be found in the origins of the Industrial Revolution, but in another it lies as much in the development of ideas in the middle of the 18th century. The individual's place in an increasingly mechanized field of production is often questioned in the debates of 20th-century architecture, and this growing dilemma is expressed in the late century's divergence of stylistic approaches.
The machinery of society, profoundly out of gear, oscillates between an
amelioration, of historial importance, and a catastrophe. The primordial instinct of
every human being is to assure himself of shelter. The various classes of workers in
society today no longer have dwellings adapted to their needs; neither the artisan
nor the intellectual. It is a question of building which is at the root of the social
unrest of today; architecture or revolution. —Le Corbusier
At first sight, it might seem that there are too many art books: too much reading goes on, and not enough looking. But for most people, art books are a personal gallery to the majority of the world's great pictures, the only possible ticket to the contents of far-flung galleries. For this reason, art books are recommended here for quality of pictures, standard of reproduction, first; second comes authority or accessibility of text. We have, however, chosen not so much picture books about individual artists, as books about trends, about art itself. Where art becomes a practical as well as an aesthetic matter, and particularly in the new, prescriptive discipline of design, things are a little different. Here theory and philosophy are crucial matters, and elegance of text bulks large. The best books of all — and it is interesting to see how many of them are by artists themselves — are those which combine experience, vision and articulacy of style. They are the cream of a rich and nourishing list.
See ANTHROPOLOGY (Agee, Kroeber, Turner): ARCHAEOLOGY (Sandars); ARCHITECTURE (Banham, Clark. Kouwenhoven, Lancaster, Lawrence, Newman, Soper); AUTOBIOGRAPHY (Cellini, Clark); BIOGRAPHY (Freud, Grigson, Hudson, Lindsay, Renoir, Thompson); DIARIES (Dali, Van Gogh); GEOGRAPHY (Tunnard); HISTORY/AMERICAN (Josephy, Jones); HISTORY/ ASIAN (Basham); HISTORY/BRITISH (Burn, Burton, Dillon, George, Strong); HOME (Conran, Jeffs, Johnson, Kron); HUMOUR (Hollowood, Larry, New Yorker, Searle, Schulz, Steadman, Steinberg); LITERARY CRITICISM (Benjamin); MATHEMATICS (Hofstadter); MEDIA (Evans. Maclean); MEDICINE (Trevor-Roper); MUSIC (Hoffnung); NATURAL HISTORY (Audubon, Be-wick, Holden)
Adburgham, Alison (ed) A Punch History of Manners and Modes, 1841-1940(1961)
Since few of us can house, let alone afford, the 7000 back numbers of Punch, this volume suffices to show how valuable this magazine is, to social historians and the inquisitive alike, as a marvellous source of information on changes in attitudes. The cartoons offer an accurate guide to fashion from bloomers to the zip fastener. Battock, Gregory (ed) The New Art: A Critical Anthology (1973) p a., For those worried about deciphering the art of the post-machine age and understanding the preoccupations of painters, sculptors, space enclosers, volume envelopers, earth movers and esoteric talkers, this collection of essays provides some useful insights. Also: Idea Art; New Ideas in Art Education. See Rosenberg.
Baudelaire, Charles. The Painter of Modern Life (1863)
The poet on the visual arts of his time is wiser and more perceptive than many full-time professional critics. Ostensibly about Constantin Guys, this book is crammed with general judgements on artistic society at large. Also: Art in Paris, 1845-1862. See Delacroix; BIOGRAPHY (Starkie); DIARIES; POETRY Behrman, S. N. Duveen (1952)
Witty, scathing account of the extraordinary career of one of the most successful 20th-century art dealers, who provided many newly rich Americans with ancestors-to-order culled from the stately homes of England, and single-handed made the unremarkable Romney into one of the world's most sought-after painters.
Bell, Clive. Art (1914)
Cornerstone of Bloomsbury Group aesthetics, with its emphasis on "significant form" and the presentation of humane values in an increasingly inhuman world. Also: Civilization. See Fry.
Berger, John Ways of Seeing(1972)
Influential essays on the gap between what we see and the knowledge and beliefs that we articulate in words. In particular Berger examines our assumptions that there is such a thing as "art" and that the perception of art objects — aesthetic experience?
— is somehow set apart from other perceptions. Hard; rewarding. Also: Permanent Red; Art and Revolution, etc.
Clark, Kenneth Looking at Pictures (1960)
The title expresses exactly what this book is about, and what Clark does as well as any living man. He makes a personal anthology of paintings — good reproductions accompany the text — and reading the book is like walking through a gallery with Clark at one's side. Also: The Nude, etc. See ARCHITECTURE; AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Conrad, Peter The Victorian Treasure-House(1973)
Switch-back progression through the labyrinth of the Victorian British mind, as manifested primarily in the visual arts, though there are constant vitalizing cross-references to poetry, fiction, technology and history. Also: Shandyism
Delacroix, Eugene Journal( 1893)
Vivid, fetching picture of the French art world in the mid 19th century, seen through the eyes of one of its leading figures. Compare with B audelaire (qv).
Frankfort, H. The Art and Architecture of the Ancient Orient (1954)
Fry, Roger Vision and Design (1920)
Essays on a variety of subjects which roused the passions of this most dynamic member of the Bloomsbury Group, exploring and explaining his sensations in front of a Claude, a Cezanne or a masterwork of the Renaissance in terms still illuminating to the layman. Also: Transformations; Cezanne Letters. See Bell.
Gaunt, William The Pre-Raphaelite Tragedy (1942)
Excellent introduction to the Pre-Raphaelites, their lives, their sometimes scandalous loves, and their deadly serious work. Also: Victorian Olympus; The Aesthetic Adventure
Giedion, Sigfried Mechanization Takes Command (1948)
The potter's wheel, the weaver's loom, iron casting and printing with movable type were early instances of the mechanization of design processes. From gradual beginnings, with the commercial exploitation of the innovations of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries, mechanization does indeed take command. Giedion's account puts up all the hares — even, in 1948, feminism — in the race for comfort, convenience, cleanliness and, above all, not godliness, but commercial success. See ARCHITECTURE
Gilson, Etienne The Arts of the Beautiful (1965 )
Gilson (a noted and dependable critic) writes with grace and style not of pictures only, but of art in general. An important and highly enjoyable book: aesthetics at their unpretentious best. Also: Form and Substance in the Ans; The Choir of Muses, etc. See PHILOSOPHY
Gombrich, Ernst Art and illusion (1960)
Exploration of the psychology of pictorial representation, covering the whole history of what artists actually did and what they thought they were doing (often two very different matters). Profound scholarship, lightly worn. Also: The Story of Art; The Sense of Order; Meditations on a Hobby Horse, etc.
Hogarth, William The Analysis of Beauty (1753)
Hogarth's paintings and engravings attacked the conventions and hypocrisies of society in general and the art world in particular. In print too he kept up the good work, with broadsides against connoisseurship and especially against classicism as the current artistic credo, in an attempt to make the language of art understandable to more than a small dilettante elite. Stimulating, invigorating essays—with points still valid today. Facsimile edition (1969) recommended.
Honour, Hugh Neoclassicism (1968)
Far-ranging, compact introduction to a whole climate of thought and feeling in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, as cool and graceful in style as the art it celebrates. Also: Romanticism; Chinoiserie. See ARCHITECTURE (Fleming)
Laver, James Taste and Fashion: From the French Revolution to the Present Day (1937)
Elegant text; delightful plates. Revised edition (1945) recommended.
McGraw-Hill (publisher) Encyclopaedia of World Art
(15 vols, 1963-68)
Mondrian, Piet. Plastic Art and Pure Plastic Art (1937)
P J Mondrian, with the minimum of words and faded but adequate images, outlines the conversion of a realist landscape painter to abstract painting, his individual brand of Cubism being known as Neo-Plasticism. A great help in understanding what sort of activity painting has become in the 20th century.
Morison, Stanley Politics and Script(1972)
No mere catalogue of scripts and types this: Morison relates the history of lettering to political, social, religious, aesthetic, and commercial factors. Unusual subject; absorbing book.
Mumford, Lewis Technics and Civilization (1934)
Mumford removes our historical blinkers by relating advances in design since the Industrial Revolution to their wider historical context. His inventory of inventions is endlessly fascinating. See ARCHITECTURE
Murray, P. and L. A Dictionary of Art and Artists (1959)
Newton, Stella M. Health, Art and Reason (1974)
Fascinating study of conflicting attitudes to female fashions in the wildly ambiguous Victorian era when reforms in dress were argued for, initiated and sometimes abandoned, on grounds of health and hygiene, art, and reason. Also: Renaissance Theatrical Costume and the Sense of the Historical Past. See Adburgham; Black.
Nochlin, Linda Realism (1971)
Forceful study of 19th-century relations between art and life, particularly in the work of those artists whose work contains specific social or political commitment.
Osborne, Harold The Oxford Companion to Art (1970)
Alphabetical reference book, more chunky and full than Murray (qv). If you can afford just one art-reference book, this should be it.
Panovsky, Erwin Meaning in the Visual Arts (1955)
Provocative collection of essays by the inventor of "iconology" — the study of the artist's visual language and how artists have conveyed meaning to spectators in various historical periods. Also: Studies in Iconology; The Life and Art of Albrecht Diirer
Pevsner, Nlkolaus Pioneers of Modern Design (1936)
The irresistible force of the Industrial Revolution meets the immovable object — the nostalgia of Victorian Revivalism — yet somehow "modern" architecture and design emerge. Revised edition (1960) recommended. Also: The Englishness of English Art; Studies in Art, Architecture and Design (especially volume II), etc. See ARCHITECTURE (Fleming, Pevsner)
Pissarro, Camille Letters to His Son Lucien (1943)
The great Impressionist writes regularly to his artist son in London over twenty years, mixing professional advice, art gossip and domestic details in a charming, revealing way.
Read, Herbert Art and Industry (1934)
Practical yet impassioned statement of faith on the principles of industrial design, by one of the major pioneers in its study. Catches the feeling of the earnest thirties; but the arguments are still relevant. Also: The Philosophy of Modem Art; Icon and Idea; The Meaning of Art, etc
Reitlinger, Gerald The Economics of Taste (3 vols, 1961-70)
Intimidating title disguises a riveting account of the rise and fall of prices and reputations in pictures (vol I) and objets d'art (vol II) since the mid 18th century. Vol III carries the tale through the swinging sixties.
Reynolds, Joshua Discourses on Art (1769 - 91)
Classic statement of classical 18th-century academic attitudes, by the then President of the British Royal Academy and one of their most successful exponents. Who should know better? Who could put it more elegantly?
Richter, Jean Paul (ed) The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci (1939)
Richter's sleuth work in collating innumerable intriguing notes from the artist's notebooks and manuscripts, aided by his cultivated ability to read Leonardo's reversed writings without the use of a mirror, makes Leonardo's contributions to art and science seem all the more remarkable. 1970 reprint recommended. See BIOGRAPHY (Freud)
Rosenberg, Harold The Anxious Object (1964)
Art critic of the New Yorker genuinely enjoys many of the more bizarre manifestations of "modern art". Enthusiasm is the best advocate, especially when matched (as here) by style, common sense, and a very necessary sense of humour. Also: The Tradition of the New; The De-Definition of Art; Artworks and Packages. See Battock.
Sandler, Irving The Triumph of American Painting (1970)
Blow-by-blow account of the rise of Abstract Expressionism in America, by one who saw it all happen, knew and knows most of the principal characters, and is able, before even the dust of the battle has completely stilled, to step back and judge with unnerving sense and precision. Also: The New York School
Schaeffer, H. 19th-century Modern (1970)
The essential antidote to Pevsner's (qv) classic Pioneers, with its artist-craftsman bias. Victorian consumer products, like bicycles, spoons and even gynaecological forceps are examined and the roots of modernism are traced in this functional tradition. Schaeffer raises a moral question too: when the perfect solution to a design problem has been reached, why should "stylists" deceive consumers with seductive new models? See Papanek.
Sickert, Walter Richard A Free House (1947)
Fine (and eccentric) artist lays about him on subjects connected with painting, friends, enemies, the art establishment (which he abhorred) and the advantages and disadvantages of the English, both of which he was well placed to appreciate. Selection by Osbert Sitwell recommended.
Smith., John Thomas Nollekens and His Times (1828)
Sublimely bitchy anecdotal biography by his former pupil and assistant of one of the 18th century's great eccentrics, who happened also to be a sculptor of note. Stedman, John The Rule of Taste from George Ito George /V(1936) Postulates general agreement upon what was considered "correct taste" in the period of the British Georges; traces the influence of Vanbrugh, Burlington, Kent, Walpole, and Adam in architecture and interior decoration and also that of Kneller, Gainsborough, Romney and other painters.
Sypher, Wylie Four Stages of Renaissance Style (1955)
A noted literary critic discusses the styles of the Renaissance as manifested not only in painting and sculpture, but also in literature, music and the other arts. A tour de force of enthusiasm and knowledge.
Vasari, Giorgio Lives of the Artists (1550 -68)
Anecdotal and a pleasure to read, but also an interesting historical document which covers every aspect of art and artists in Renaissance Italy when, as Gombrich (qv) puts it, "artists became conscious and over-conscious of the great achievements of the past that weighed on them".
James Ackerman is the Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Fine Arts. His essays and articles are on the history of architecture. critical and historical theory, and the interaction of art and science. His books focus on his long-held fascination with Rome: The Architecture of Michelangelo, Palladio and Palladio's Villas. Recently he has expanded his artistic interests to film: Looking for Renaissance Rome (1976) and Palladio the Architect and His Influence in America (1980).
I'm not sure that any of these books (except possibly for Barthes) would have the same impact today that they did when published: they are still worth reading, but they were written in and for another milieu. If all important books retained their value permanently we wouldn't need to produce any new ones.
Roger Fry. Vision and Design (1920). New York: Oxford University Press, 1981. (Pb)
I was sixteen when I bought this book of essays on various themes, and I was overwhelmed by my first contact with its subtle and sensitive approach to art. Fry's elegant prose reinforced his message that the essence of art resides not in the reproduction of nature but in form, color, rhythm and other abstract characteristics. Today his idealistic position seems rather old hat, but his writing is still much more engaging and persuasive than that of almost any of our current critics.
E. H. Gombrich. Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (1960). Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961. (Pb)
This book fundamentally influenced the way I speak and write about pictures. Gombrich's central argument, which was based on the most advanced research in perception psychology, was that artists cannot see the visual world except in terms of formulas that shape their perceptions, and that to a great extent these formulas are based on their experience of existing works of art. We, in turn, approach their work with our own formulas. The book laid to rest the claim of Ruskin and later criticism that the best painters of nature had learned to look with an "innocent eye," uncontaminated by concepts or knowledge. Gombrich showed how much every effort to project onto a flat surface the "real" world we perceive as we move about and use two eyes is affected by the social environment, by preexisting art and by personal experience.