(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best architecture history books

The first text that springs to my mind is the Renaissance text Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (typically translated as "The Strife of Love in a Dream").

It was, and remains, a remarkable text for many reasons--its use of Italian, Greek, Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew, sometimes fused together to form new words; its many elaborate and detailed woodcut illustrations; its cloaking of the (for its time) familiar themes of courtly love in arcane (and sometimes less than discernible) references; its latent eroticism and, at times, outright sexual obsession; and most prolifically, a mystery has surrounded the proper attribution of its authorship.

It is typically ascribed to Francesco Colonna, a friar of late fifteenth-century Italy; some have also attributed the Hypnerotomachia to Aldus Manutius, the owner of the Venetian printing house which published the work in 1499; yet another popular school of thought assigns credit to that epitome of "Renaissance men," Leon Battista Alberti.

Some say that the author's identity (the text was published anonymously) is revealed by a puzzle within the book: an acrostic of the first letters of the chapters ("POLIAM FRATER FRANCISCUS COLUMNA PERAMAVIT") reads "Friar Francesco Colonna Passionately Loved Polia". Subsequent discoveries and investigations, capped off by Casella & Pozzi's 1959 study, seemed to confirm Colonna as the author.

Others continue to plump for other authors (Liane Lefaivre's Leon Battista Alberti's Hypnerotomachia Poliphilia: Re-Cognizing the Architectural Body in the Early Italian Renaissance says it all right there in the title).

It is easy for the debate over its authorship to obscure the truly remarkable nature of this text, which can truly be said to be the world's first stream-of-consciousness novel. As with Shakespeare (whose authorship has also been unfairly maligned by some due to his station in life), the true mystery and wonder of the Hypnerotomachia lies in its remarkable complexity, the deliberate obscurity and inventiveness of its text, and its ability to yield new meanings and interpretations centuries after its publication.

In my humble opinion, the following are great and important reads for a newcomer into the subject.

Experiencing Architecture by Rasmussen

Any and ALL of Frank Ching's books, starting with Form, Space and Order

Sun, Wind, and Light is a timeless reference book.

The Dynamics of Architectural Form by Rudolf Arnheim is a great study on environmental psychology.

Also, Pattern Language if you're a complete masochist and really want to go DEEP into the subject.

I've got more if you're interested, but that should keep you busy for quite a while haha. Best of luck and I hope you find them as enjoyable as I have.

> Second, it still doesnt line up. The Indian kings and lords and merchants were all making stupid amounts of money from cotton, tea, and, even still most prominently, spices.

The status of the Indian Princes that ruled over the so-called salute states were semi-sovereign in nature. Their nominal overlord was the Mughal Emperor in Delhi, although they effectively acted in accordance with their own wishes. After the Sepoy Rebellion of 1858, the Mughal Emperor was deposed and was replaced with the King-Emperor, the British Sovereign, who turned the salute states into actual vassals rather than nominal vassals who were pledged to the Emperor of India. Prior to this event, the Indian Princes could have technically done as they wished in terms of domestic and international policy.

The issue is that the salute states were unable to capture the European market due to a lack of free trade. Yes, the Indians did have raw materials in abundance, but they still lacked the trade infrastructure in which to sell them. Under the Company Raj, the Indian Princes personally benefitted from allowing the British to run their daily affairs while they remained extremely well-paid figureheads: the palaces of the Indian Princes were enormous, lavish and multiple times the size of the great country houses of Europe.

A great source for this is a book that may be out of print but one that remains one of my favorites An Imperial Vision: Indian Architecture and Britain's Raj. The book goes into great depth about how the Indian Princes became rapidly Europeanized while the British administrators themselves attempted to keep them in an orientalist lens.

Indeed they were. But what always amused me was how each civilization painted each god in a different light.

• Sumerian: Enki, (Symbol of a Snake) being the 'Master of Earth' was sort of demoted for insubordination and they sent his arch nemesis 'Enlil' to take over the operation from him. Enlil took command of all 'Earth opperations' But Enlil didn't seem to keen on being pitted against Enki. In some ways she respected him and she realized this was a spat with the higher ups that she didn't want to be put in the middle of so she eventually mediated between Enki (who had gone full on rogue) and the other gods who just wanted things to go back to normal. Regardless of the sitution, the mythos always seemed to revolve around 'Enki the super hero' and painted him as a rogue cop who turned in his badge before the mayor asked him to come back and solve all the department's problems.
  
  
• Greece. Prometheus (Symbol of a Snake) WAS A COMPLETE TRAITOR THAT GAVE KNOWLEDGE TO ALL HUMANITY WHAT A JERK! But it's okay because Zeus punished the crap out of him.
  
  
• Norse. Loki (Symbol of a Snake) was always a bit of a trouble maker and he often had problems with Odin but everyone just kind of tolerated him because you know, Loki had done some good things in the past and he was kind of alright guy really.
  
  
• Hinduism SHIVA (Symbol of a Snake) is the biggest, baddest cat in the multiverse. He's the scariest, meanest, biggest most powerful deity that ever existed. But also a really nice guy. One day one of Shiva's minions captured Krishnas daughter and Krishna said "I'm gonna kick his butt" And they had a BIG BIG WAR but then Krishna said 'Wait why are we fighting? Lets be friends.' And Shiva said "Okay, I'm a nice guy. Friends it is."
  
  
• China 'The Golden Emperor' (Symbol of a Snake...like... dragon... thing) showed up one day handing out things like agriculture, medicine and generally helping out the people of the area. He claimed to have created them all and informed people he was a dragon. Later on he flew away.
  
  
• Jewish, The Serpent meddled because he's an asshole. He could be Satan but he probably isn't Satan. He's really just an asshole.
  
  There was a book on this a while ago it was... Secrets of the Serpent which explored a lot of these similiarity but basically it was just an observation of the serpent's Modus Opperendi. Basically a 'God' shows up, always associated with the serpent symbol. He claims to have created all humans or helped to have created all humans. He's very interested in the health of humanity and often progresses medical knowledge wherever he lands. Depending on where you encountered him the people either knew a little bit more or a little bit less about him. Some cultures, like the Native Americans knew hardly anything about him at all where as middle easterners had full access to his day planner. It's just a theory I know but it's so ridiculously interesting.

Sure. :) I was trying not to hijack the thread, but I'll just put the list here and that way anyone can have it. Keep in mind, these aren't all collections of stories, some of them are research topics, but none of them that I've browsed through look like bad reads. The ones I have read I've tried to note.

Iroquois Supernatural: Talking Animals and Medicine People - Michael Bastine, Mason Winfield - most closely related to thread topic

Life After Life - Raymond Moody - Very good intro to Near Death Experience research

Reunions: Visionary Encounters with Departed Loved Ones - Raymond Moody

Journey of Souls - Michael Newton - Read this one, it was great, changed my views on reincarnation

The Day Satan Called - Bill Scott

Hunt for the Skinwalker - Colm Kelleher, George Knapp - read parts of, need to finish

The Vengeful Djinn - Rosemary Ellen Guiley - I've read this one, it's really good too, has a large "slow" section in the middle that quotes the Q'uran a lot, but some good creepy Djinn stories.

The Djinn Connection - Rosemary Ellen Guiley

Ghost Culture: Theories, Context, and Scientific Practice - John Sabol

Zones of Strangeness - Peter A. McCue

Lost Secrets of Maya Technology - James O'Kon

The Mythology of Supernatural - Nathan Robert Brown - this one might sound cheesy, but I've read a book on world mythology by the same author, and apparently the writers of the show did their research

Holy Ghosts: Or How a (Not-So) Good Catholic Boy Became a Believer in Things That Go Bump in the Night - Gary Jansen

I work in a popular indie bookshop that is also a bit of a tourist destination in London. if you came into my shop an asked this question, i would suggest these two new books on londons rivers: 1 and 2. Same title, but both different and very good books. Also secret london. I've been a londoner for 15 years, and my parents both are from here, but most of the places in this book i had never come across. My better half, who is training to be a city of london tour guide, and I, have been using the book to get to know our city better for the last few months. Another awesome way to look at the city is through lost london an awesome (an reasonably priced) coffee table book of historic photographs of the city, illuminating for any londoner. If you are looking for any other sort of book on the city (novel, history of a particular period, esoteric guide, etc...), let me know. It's what I do.

P.S. While i have linked to amazon above, if you can afford to, buy from your local independent bookshop! you'll miss us if we go!

The standard textbook history right now appears to be The Romans: From Village to Empire.

Klaus Bringmann's A History of the Roman Republic also still seems to be the standard introduction to that period (i.e. the time period of Imperator).

If you want to read about the end of the Roman Republic and Caesar/Augustus, it's hard to turn down Caesar: Life of a Colossus which is great for the general reader, alongside his Augustus: First Emperor of Rome.

He also writes pretty solid books on other major Roman figures, such as In the Name of Rome: The Men who won the Roman Empire.

If you want to get a pretty good introduction to Roman History, but more of what life was like for the average citizen, SPQR by Mary Beard is actually a good choice.

Older, but still solid, is Peter Garnsey's The Roman Empire: Economy, Society, and Culture which covers a lot of things Beard doesn't.

For the Roman army, Adrian Goldsworthy's The Complete Roman Army is a solid introduction.

However you'll want to break that down into several books if you want to go deeper:

Roman Military Equipment by MC Bishop and JCN Coulston

The Roman Imperial Army of the First and Second Centuries AD by Graham Webster

A Companion to the Roman Army by Paul Erdkamp

For the collapse of the Western Roman Empire I'd recommend both Peter Heather's The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians combined with the more scholarly Guy Halsall's Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West.

For the forgotten half of Roman History, often mistakenly called the "Byzantine Empire," it's hard to cover with just one book, but Warren Treadgold's A History of the Byzantine State and Society has become the standard reading. John Haldon's The Empire that would not Die covers the critical transition during the Islamic conquests thoroughly.

Of course I have to include books on the two IMO most overrated battles in Roman history on this list since that's what people love:

The Battle of the Teutoberg Wald: Rome's Greatest Defeat by Adrian Murdoch

The Battle of Cannae: Cannae: Hannibal's Greatest Victory is sort of the single book to read if you can only pick one. However, The Ghosts of Cannae is also good. But if you actually want to go really in depth, you need Gregory Daly's dry-as-the-Atacama book Cannae: The Experience of Battle in the Second Punic War. When I say dry as the Atacama, I mean it, but it's also extraordinarily detailed.

I'd complement this with Goldsworthy's The Punic Wars.

For other interesting topics:

The Emergence of the Bubonic Plague: Justinian's Flea and Plague and the End of Antiquity.

Hadrian's Wall: Hadrian's Wall by Adrian Goldsworthy

Roman Architecture: Roman Architecture by Frank Sear (definitely a bit more scholarly but you can probably handle it)

I may post more in addendum to this list with further comments but I think I'm reaching the character count.

It's a great resource. You can never memorise it, but it's fantastic to refer back to.

Frampton's Studies in Tectonic Culture (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Studies-Tectonic-Culture-Construction-Architecture/dp/0262561492 ) is brilliant, the Scarpa section alone makes the book worthwhile

The Deplazes book is great, but that one.

Structure systems is old school, but it's great for structural concepts, diagrams etc.

So, the first picture is from the tomb of Khnumhotep and Niankhkhnum, servants to the Pharaoh during the Egyptian Fifth Dynasty. There has actually been considerable scholarly debate as to whether this relief and others, like it suggest that the two men were in a homosexual relationship, or were close friends, or were brothers.

We don't know much about attitudes toward homosexuality in ancient Egypt, so it's really going to be speculative here, but there are several things that could push a historian either way. On the one hand, both of these men were buried together, yes, but they were also buried with extensive depictions of their wives and many children, suggesting that they were at least somewhat interested in heterosexual intercourse. On the other hand, the depiction of the two men nose-to-nose is suggestive of extreme closeness; there is some evidence that "Eskimo kissing" (rubbing of noses) was a form of intimate expression between lovers in Ancient Egypt, though, again, sources are rather scant.

Another theory is that the men are depicted as connected physically because they literally were -- in other words, they were conjoined twins.

As for the second picture, this does not look like someone about to perform a sex act. Both men depicted are clothed. There is an unfortunate discoloration near the rear man's knee that looks rather phallic, but the front man's bent-at-the-waist posture is quite common in depictions of workers, especially field workers, in Egyptian murals, and it is further quite common to have an upright person (an overseer) standing behind the bent-over worker, implying domination or at least supervision. There is not necessarily anything sexual (or law enforcement related) going on here.

Sources:

• Parkinson, Richard: Homosexual Desire and Middle Kingdom Literature in The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology
  
  
• Oakes, Lorna: Pyramids Temples and Tombs of Ancient Egypt: An Illustrated Atlas of the Land of the Pharaohs (2003)

The best books in my experience have been overviews of Aegean prehistory. There's an incredible amount of scholarship, so it's really just about finding a good overview and drilling down on specific topics/sites that interest you.

For advanced undergrads/early grads the standards are typically the Cambridge Companion to the Aegean Bronze Age, the Oxford Handbook of the Bronze Age Aegean, and Aegean Art and Architecture.

All of these can get a bit technical, especially with regards to chronology and such. Of those three Aegean Art and Architecture is probably the most readable. There are older monographs devoted to Crete specifically, but they tend to be older (like 1960's) and quite out of date.

Are you interested in a particular phase, site, or facet of the civilization? Because that would help narrow it down. Keep in mind that there are huge gaps in our understanding of the Minoans and their culture. You aren't going to find many specifics about their culture unless you go down the road of very shaky scholarship.

If your interested in the late Bronze Age collapse (which came some time after the peak of the Minoan civilization), check out the book 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed. It's new and I haven't read it myself, but it's by Eric Cline, who wrote the Oxford Handbook, so it's bound to be well researched. Might be a nice overview of part of the Bronze Age in a more digestible format.

Anyway let me know a bit more about your interests and maybe I can help a bit more. I can also dig out my old syllabi for more suggestions.

Architectural Theory might be good:

>This book brings together all of the most important and influential essays about architecture written since the Renaissance, copiously illustrated and neatly organized chronologically by country. From Alberti and Palladio to Le Corbusier and Koolhaas, the best treatises by architecture’s greatest masters are gathered here, each accompanied by an essay discussing its historical context and significance. This is the all-in-one, must-have book for anyone interested in what architects have to say about their craft.

I've skimmed through in the bookstore, and it seems to be written for the non-architect (i.e., no archi-babble). It could be something useful as it gives a general overview the theory that has shaped practice, which can be further studied in a University.

I didn't know much about Japanese architects until I took a class on "The Metabolists" in grad school and I was hugely inspired. The class was by one of my favorite professors and that, combined with the content learned was maybe one of the most enjoyable architecture classes I had taken. It was a perfect mix of history and philosophy. Lots of class discussions and things like that.


The book that we used as our main text is called Project Japan: Metabolism Talks. It was actually written by Koolhaus (in addition to a few other). It isn't a textbook...more of a collection of history, interviews, specific projects. Its a beautiful book and I still thumb through it all the time. I would highly recommend it to anybody in the field, especially if you don't know much about modern Japanese architecture.

Here is a link to the book on Amazon!

While the results of what anthropologists do (ethnographies, in film and in books) can be studied by anyone, the actual ethics and methodology of the field demand interaction with other anthropologists, in my view. We work directly with humans, usually humans from different cultures than our own, and often involving personal topics.

I would start with David Maybury-Lewis's Millenium series for an overview of what anthropologists study. In that series, each video was made with the active involvement of the people shown. That's true of Napoleon Chagnon's films too (which are probably on youtube or perhaps at your local library).

I'd also recommend Renato Rosaldo's work and that of Philippe Bourgois. Lila Abu-Lughod's work gives a great viewpoint on what it's like to actually do fieldwork.

But one thing I'd do is read up on method. Here's a little pdf on medical anthropology:

https://pcmh.ahrq.gov/sites/default/files/attachments/anthropological-approaches-brief.pdf


Beginner ethnographers usually follow a standard outline, seen in all the little ethnographies. Here's a classic:

https://smile.amazon.com/Zinacantan-Maya-Community-Highlands-Chiapas/dp/0674968255/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1549045585&sr=1-1&keywords=zinacantan

​

I guess I'm encouraging you to try and *do* some anthropology as well as read it. You could even start a subreddit for "amateur ethnography" and do blogs. Many people are keen and important observers of the culture around them. It's harder than it looks to write objectively, sensitively and without bias about one's own culture. I do believe that this kind of writing and analysis is very important (especially given something of a collapse in journalism).

/u/Dukeronomy,

You aren't alone, as they've been widely chronicled by others:

https://www.amazon.com/Dingbat-2-0-Apartment-Projection-Metropolis/dp/0983254052

https://www.amazon.com/Pretty-Vacant-Angeles-Dingbat-Observed/dp/0811840247

...as well as on-line:

https://laist.com/2015/09/08/photos_the_beautiful_dingbats_of_lo.php

https://www.instagram.com/dingbatsandmore/

We hope this information helps. Please accept our best wishes for your project.

Respectfully Yours in Safety and Service,

Brian Humphrey
Firefighter/Specialist
Public Service Officer
Los Angeles Fire Department

Yes, LAFD has an official subreddit at /r/LAFD

Sorry for such a late reply. I travel often and try not to bring my computer.

The book on exactly this history of typology, as it would be useful to architects, has been understood and mostly written, but the author has yet to find a publisher willing to work with him on this particular book. However, the author has previously translated Quatrememere de Quincy's writing, of which these ideas were originally put forward. ( Quatrememere De Quincy's Historical Dictionary of Architecture : The True, the Fictive and the Real ) Quatrememere was not the first person to propose architectural typologies, but he did clarify their structure. Quatrememere was one of the most important and prolific writers on architectural and artistic theory while leading the Ecole. Before this book, his ideas were never translated into English, and his ideas almost forgotten.

I'd suggest getting this book as it goes into many great topics including this discussion of "Type, Character, Style". Type are the few arrangements previously mentioned, character would be the next consideration and more numerous as it is regional commonalities, and Style the most numerous as it finally considers material and expresses the architects hand.

It might also be useful for you to look at "The Imperfect City: On Architectural Judgment". The author write a bit more on Type, Character, and Style and the understanding and perception of the qualities of architecture have shifted, and why.

If i may add a suggestion, when it comes to history, i find Bill Addis' Building 3000 years of design engineering and construction to be absolutely amazing.
Don't be fooled by the bland brown cover; it is filled to the brim with great illustrations, perfect for inspiration.
As well as architecture, it also covers some structural engineering which is also important/interesting (don't worry, there are no formula's, just concepts).

Your Dad is being overly harsh, but he's not wrong. Simply put you shouldn't be using a video game as a source for any discussions you have with other people. It's fine as an inspiration but it is not a source of historical information.

These wouldn't be bad places to start and should be sources your Dad would be happy with.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Aztecs-Very-Short-Introduction-Introductions-ebook/dp/B005YMCCR8/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1487438218&sr=8-2&keywords=oxford+history+of+aztecs

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ancient-Kingdoms-Mexico-Penguin-history/dp/0140135871/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1487438233&sr=8-1&keywords=penguin+history+of+aztecs

I can't really delve into any detail, but basically archaeology didn't really become a thing until the mid-19th century. Antiquarianism was around for about 100 years before that, but it was really just about collecting interesting things as historical relics, and not about scientific inquiry or trying to understand the past through archaeological sites and artifacts. It's not that people did not care about archaeological sites, but rather that they just saw them as ruins or old buildings and did not really see them as important places for learning about who and what came before. They may not have even recognized them as ancient places at all.

The case in Italy must surely be different because the history of the Roman empire was well known by 1700 and people must have known that these ruins were built during the Roman Empire, but I don't know much about Italian archaeology or its history. In other parts of the world places that are now considered archaeological sites probably were not seen as anything special and were not recognized as the ruins and artifacts of societies that came thousands of years before. At least not in Western thought; I can't speak for how non-Western people viewed such ruins.

I've also heard that until the 19th century there was no true concept of the passage of time in Western thought. There was the Biblical age, the Classical age, and the modern age; that was it, the world would then end. People of course experienced lifetimes and knew that time passed, but there was no sense of any real change or that a stone celt was actually made by a pre-Biblical culture 8,000 years ago. That concept of long-term change and abandonment just didn't exist, and certainly the concept of deep time did not exist (until the 19th century people knew that the Earth was ~6000 years old). I find this concept very hard to wrap my head around, but that's because I've grown up in a world where deep time exists and things are always changing.

A great source for all this is Bruce Trigger's "A History of Archaeological Thought". The first two or three chapters go over the early development of antiquarianism and archaeology, and how Western thought changed to allow for deep time and the recognition of non-Western pasts (the rest of the book is about how thought within the discipline has changed over the 20th century). Trigger was a true master of archaeology and although this book is long and kind of dense, it is also very accessible to a non-specialist.

You might also find Barbara Bender's "Stonehenge: Making Space (Materializing Culture)" interesting. It is about Stonehenge, obviously, and about how the public perceives and uses Stonehenge. She talks about the history of Stonehenge as a monument, too, including some descriptions of it in the 12th or 13th century A.D. I can't remember exactly what she said about how it was viewed then, but I remember it being very interesting and pretty different from how it is perceived today.