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| Author: Alain De Botton
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: $16.95
Buy New: $9.70
You Save: $7.25 (43%)
New (33) Used (8) from $9.70
Avg. Customer Rating:  36 reviews
Sales Rank: 9064
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8 x 6 x 0.7
ISBN: 0307277240
Dewey Decimal Number: 720
EAN: 9780307277244
ASIN: 0307277240
Publication Date: April 8, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Beautiful. March 9, 2007
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
My brother recommended this author to me, and I'm glad I bought this. A great book about architecture and some of the philosophy and history behind it, beautifully written I might add. You don't have to be an architect to understand this book, as the title might imply, but if you're an aspiring architect then this will definitely give you inspiration. This is one of those books that you will keep for a very long time, I know I will.
 What's wrong with Wright? February 24, 2007
13 out of 28 found this review helpful
How is it possible to write a book about architecture, most of it in the 20th century, and not mention Frank Lloyd Wright--even once? I guess you'd have to ask De Botton, because certainly no one else writing about architecture has ignored a man who is arguably the most influential architect of the 20th century, and certainly one who's had a greater effect on residential architecture than anyone else.
Much is said of Le Corbusier, and it's refreshing to read that his Villa Savoy was a practical disaster that leaked worse than anything Wright ever was criticized for. And yet, De Botton still calls it beautiful and writes rhapsodic of Corbu.
Corbu's vision of cities has turned into a nightmare, which lead to many public housing buildings that are now being demolished. Wright's vision of Broadacre City, while being overly optimistic about the automobile and not seeing the inevitable problems (though this view was common at the time), has helped visualize the kind of suburbia that is enjoying increasing popularity around the world, even in China.
While the book does have some interesting points, an author with a bias so strong as to ignore the one architect who might affect our happiness at home is certainly suspect.
Inspired to write February 11, 2007
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
Although I consider myself a prodigious reader, I have never written a book review. Rather than repeat the many well thought out reviews below, I would just say that only rarely does a book provide the tools to view the world--and your "self"--in a new light. This is one of them. While I agree that it may not be the best primer on architecture, that doesn't seem to me to be the author's point. Rather it is more in the nature of George Nelson's "How To See"; a vocabulary for expressing emotional response to architecture and design, and a manual that (in an almost musical tone) explains the mechanism behind it. Buy this book; read it twice.
 I Was Expecting Something Different February 6, 2007
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
More of thesis on the nature of happiness than the architecture primer I was expecting. That would be fine except it reads a little too much like a thesis too. The photos compliment the text nicely though.
Brilliant! February 3, 2007
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
I just finished reading this book and felt inspired to express my appreciation for its content. I am always intrigued by those who claim to have new ideas for dealing with our existence as humans in more adaptive ways. (the title includes happiness in it after all) Our perceptual strategies create the world we experience yet most of us are never aware that we are the architects of our psychological homes. The author, through a beautifully written series of comparisons and parallels just might awaken some of us to the builder within.
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