An essential toolkit for understanding architecture as both art form and the setting for our everyday lives. Witold Rybczynski, one of our best, most stylish critics, for his writing on architecture, answers our most fundamental questions about how good—and not so good—buildings are designed and constructed. The book is an enlightening humanist's toolkit for thinking about the built environment and seeing it afresh. “The beautiful and the useful, in buildings as well as books, never becomes obsolete. Neither do writers like Rybczynski, who can teach us how to recognize and appreciate both.” - Laura Miller, Salon The book's chief pleasure may be that Rybczynski, ever the engaging and thoughtful writer, offers a wide-ranging tour of the glories and curiosities, old and new, in the field.” —Peter Whoriskey, The Washington Post