Brick: A World History

I had to write a review because it ended up meaning so much…followed my intuition, and bought this book for someone special birthday who loves brick work and he says he loves it so much and he’s looks at it everyday, expresses how he feels really inspired, and said when he opened it he just knew “I listen well” lol, (well, he’s says that was the feeling he got) - he’s the best, and deserve the best.The book is beautiful, and shows the history.Great buy! I’d buy it again in a heartbeat.

This is true to its title. As expected, it is a massive tome which succinctly and thoroughly covers the history of the production and use of brick since its earliest known beginning. Two to four pages are devoted to each period. It does not suffer from the limitations of some similar books which are focussed on a particular country, such as Great Britain, but is truly worldwide in its coverage. The color photography and line drawings are excellent and convey the points being made in the text. The text is lucid and accurate, If one is to purchase only a single book about brick for one's library, then one could hardly do better than to have this book.

This is an amazing book, if you happen to be interested in Bricks, which the recipient certainly was.However, having just paid over £30 for the book, secondhand, I was disappointed to pass it on to the Birthday Boy in it's postage parcel, for him to find the cover was torn,and worse, it had on it a price sticker on it saying 95p! Mortifying. Guess whoever sold it to me bought it from a car boot sale, or charity shop - all I can say is, well done for spotting a bargain!

The author writes easily, seems to know everything, and has a completely unpretentious style. He also chose his subjects well, with many less-well-known examples and only a few icons. As a historian, he occasionaly suffers from their tendency to document, say, the names and ruling periods of the Middle Ages Persian kings before getting to the interesting parts about the use of brick in that era. The photographs are all similar to the one on the cover--deep colors and bright sunlight--and their consistency adds a nice touch. The organization of the book was good too, presenting the subject in manageable bites.

All in all it's just another brick in the wall ... NOT! This book is fabulous. I bought it for my dad who has been a bricklayer since he was a teenager. He is fascinated by the history. The photos are also magnificent. A very fine read!

This book is a visual feast. It is full of exemplary brick masonry examples from all over the world, and is well worth the price.

Comprehensive history of the development and usage of bricks over time. Using as a reference in my new book titled "The First Environmental Engineers; Ham, Pork, and Chop"

Beautiful

I am not ashamed to say that I am utterly obsessed with this book. It is huge, but then the subject's history is vast. The author has done incredibly well to give such scope to it that, while very accessible to the lay person, it would take pride of place in any discerning architect's library. To achieve that is no mean feat, to my mind. You may want to get a book holder because it's heavy. The photography is exceptional, and the buildings chosen to explore are wonderful. I cannot express my delight to find Dudok's Hilversum Town Hall in such bright-as-day vividity. It's hard enough trying to find good images online, and here is a section devoted to it. The author and photographer made sure they visited every single building together. It shows too, in the care and understanding of each article. It took them ten trips all over the world, over a period of three years. When I read this in the introduction, I had a feeling come over me of intense gratitude; I felt like personally thanking the authors for their troubles. I love books but I don't always feel this way to this extent. I have around twenty or so books on architecture, but this is by far one of my very favourite. Cannot recommend highly enough.

I bought this book initially for the photographs, and it has some absolutely stunning pictures from all over the world. However when I started to read it I found I couldn't put it down! It is a truly interesting book, and somehow manages to blend the technical information necessary for a brickie like me with a great deal of historical detail to make a really fascinating read. I would recommend this to anyone with a slight interest in either construction or history, you won't be disappointed.

Excellent text and photographs. Good purchase.

The receiver was very pleased with the gift.

After all of the positive reviews, I was fairly disappointed by the book. The review of the technology is fairly general and not very specific. For example, brick composition percentages, firing temperatures, bond patterns, etc. are not discussed very much at all. He talks about Romans sawing bricks, but not what implements they used to saw them nor does the book include any illustrations of such implements from that period. Certainly some must be available from Pompeii.What is worse is that the illustrations do not seem to be linked to the text. Not only is there no cross-referencing system (i.e. see Fig. 5), but more complicated points are not illustrated, e.g. opus recticulatum, and where there is an accompanying illustration, such as the Temple of Rediculus, the captions do not reflect the text, e.g. 'note the use of red brick highlights and moulded bricks.' Therefore, you must read the text to understand what to look for in the picture. Diagrams of how to lay the bricks to achieve the various designs shown in the photos would have been a great addition.The photographs are good quality prints. Some have close ups of details. But others, like of the small mausoleum on p. 117, waste good space on the background, resulting in a smaller picture of the building, and do not have a close up of interesting details, in this case the two colour brickwork of the dome. The text often reads like for a guidebook, i.e. building x is noted by its use of y bricks and z patterns. These are great if you are going to visit, but rather weak in the light of limited photography.