With a rare combination of insight, wit, and candor, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Allan Temko has been looking at the world we are building.

His provocative essays examine and challenge the architecture of skyscrapers, factories, schools, hotels, shopping centers, mass transit systems, and other structures, as well as raise the larger issues of urban planning and politics. Not content just to stand aloof and review finished buildings, Temko has made criticism a tool for social activism, speaking out before ground is broken and fighting to shape the bridges and convention centers and public spaces that shape our environment.

Regardless of the prestige of the architect or the grandiosity of the project, the author unblinkingly castigates buffoonery, pretense, and blunders, making him one of the nation's most respected advocates of excellence, integrity, and the public interest.

These articles and reviews, which have been selected from more than thirty years of writing for the San Francisco Chronicle, Architectural Forum, the AIA Journal, and Harper's, analyze the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, Julia Morgan, Frank Gehry, Bernard Maybeck, and many other noted and lesser-known architects. In his fight for environmental consciousness and architectural greatness, Allan Temko has given us a new way to look at the world.