House Styles in America: The Old-House Journal Guide to the Architecture of AmericanHomes

This is a book about American house styles, and they are discussed in twenty-one chapters and illustrated with over 200 color plates and line drawings.
Neither a comprehensive history of American residential architecture nor a compendium of America's "greatest" houses, this fascinating and useful book looks instead at broad trends in domestic building from the first days of European settlement on this continent through the Great Depression and beyond - from saltboxes to split-levels. There are certainly mansions to be found here, for they help to define certain styles. Yet the chief focus is not on grand houses but on typical ones - examples that capture the essence of the everyday rather than the extraordinary.

James C. Massey is a partner in Massey Maxwell Associates, Historic Preservation Consultants.