Shaping a nation

Original, readable, and crisply articulated, this narrative history of the buildings that shaped the American century profiles such major figures as Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, I.M. Pei, Robert Venturi, and Louis Kahn. Among the issues covered by Wiseman are the triumph of modernism, the growth of architectural preservation, and the eclipse of the practical arts by money, theory and abstraction. 190 illustrations.