A Field Guide to America's Historic Neighborhoods and Museum Houses: The Western States

A beautifully done baedeker of historic information on settlement patterns and architecture of the American West. As in their other books, Lee and McAlester weave local historiography with the creation of venacular architecture into entertaining narrative.There are two apparent shortcomings: a relative dearth of good photos--for a quasi-reference work, there is simply not enough visual stimulation, and a highly cryptic reference system wherein the photo captions are not cross referenced properly with the notes. Otherwise, this is a book to be valued by those with an interest in housing and architecture.