To my surprise, this book begins with a discussion of the Earth's orbit, precession around its axis, its climate system, and more. This segues naturally into a discussion of all the natural phenomena that buildings deal with and just how it is that buildings deal with them. The book wasn't quite what I was expecting: a basic discussion of the mechanics of buildings. It's actually a lot more, and greater, than that

The book was broader than I'd expected, which was good and bad for my purposes, but more good than bad. I wanted a deeper look at theory of construction, distribution of forces, construction methods, and related things than Allen provides. However, I think Allen offers a good basic overview of that kind of engineering (which I expect to use as a stepping-off point) while at the same time introducing a lot of topics related to architectural design that are really important and that I found fascinating and that I'd never given much thought to. For instance, the discussion of the different forces that can drive water into a building and how those forces are countered via things like labyrinth joints or vapor barriers, and how different methods introduce their own issues was really nifty and gave me a lot to think about as I observe buildings 'in the wild.' It's a great book! ( )