Building up and tearing down

the long version

"In this collection of fifty-seven essays, the critic Tracy Kidder called "America's foremost interpreter of public architecture" moves from Havana to Beijing, from Chicago to Las Vegas, dissecting everything from skyscrapers by Norman Foster and museums by Tadao Ando to airports, monuments, suburban shopping malls, and white-brick apartment houses. This is a comprehensive account of the best - and the worst - of the "age of architecture.""--BOOK JACKET.