by David Macaulay
I’ve known about this book for years. I’ve had a guess about the gist of the book since being told the title. I’ve even had the book set strategically on my desk in eye-sight (evidence below) for over a year, both to remind me about long-term efforts, and to remind me to actually read the book. I finally did.
The story is fictional, and French. The guts of the story come from gathering details about a number of Gothic cathedrals built in Europe in the 12-14th centuries. It’s interesting that the only real qualification in the Preface is that the “story of its almost uninterrupted construction…represents a somewhat ideal situation,” and that’s still with the finished product taking eighty-six years.
The hand-drawn illustrations are good, and the life illustrations are even better.
