The Prairie School (Norton Library)

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Summary: A review of the Chicago Prairie School and its architects
Review: First let me say I am not an architect. I am interested enough in this design form to want to learn more about the history and designs of the Prairie School, and its impact on American architecture. I came across this book while looking for just such a review, yet I wanted to avoid wading through textbooks. What I found was a very readable and seemingly comprehensive review of the students of this movement, its background, and its philosophy. The history seems reasonably complete, well presented and ultimately interesting. The book's weakness is its inevitable superficial treatment of each individual's portfolio and their evolution; the student of architecture will want to have more detailed reference materials at hand. For the non-architect, this did create some difficulty in understanding how each of these creators related to each other. This then occassionally creates some dry reading. Overall, however, I have not yet found a better distillation of the Prairie School history. I enjoyed this book, and look forward to a trip to Chicago to investigate some of these architects' works.