The author is the illustrator as well, and his pen and ink renditions are museum worthy. As an artist, and not an academic, his approach is informal and slightly irreverent. The books emphasis is on the Colonial era, whose styles he divides into New England, Hudson River, Mid-Atlantic, Chesapeake, Southern, French and Spanish. He then sums up the dozen or so Victorian styles, predominantly Italianate and Queen Anne, and ends with the Colonial Revival, Bungalow, and Prairie styles (which he interestingly claims derives from the clean lines of H.H. Richardsons Shingle style but whose name, disappointingly, he does not suggest derives from its origin in Illinois, the Prairie State). And he points out some academic styles were revived exclusively for the mansions of the turn of the century industrial barons. He has not much to say about more recent houses, only mentioning the International Style, but overall it is still a good book.
