Pre-publication title: The heroic age of Gothic invention.

Nine essays represent the integration of military history with the broader concerns of historians, suggesting that the military history of the Middle Ages was more dynamic than previously thought if studied within a socio-political context of transformation. Specifically, the essays deal with various topics: mottes and town defenses, knights and esquires, the English Templars, Erasmus, Sir Wiliam Pelham, Josse Clichtove, and the Dutch Republic. The editors are British academics, but biographies of the contributing authors are not supplied. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Architecture as Cosmology examines the precedents, interpretations, and influences of the architecture of one of the great buildings in the history of architecture, Lincoln Cathedral. It analyzes the origin and development of its architectural forms, which were to a great extent unprecedented and were very influential in the development of English Gothic architecture and in conceptions of architecture to the present day. Architecture as Cosmology emphasizes the relation of the architectural forms to medieval philosophy, focusing on the writings of Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln (1235-53). The architecture is seen as a text of the philosophy, cosmology, and theology of medieval English culture. This book should be useful to anyone interested in architecture, architectural history, architectural theory, Gothic architecture, and medieval philosophy.

While the terms used to describe the tracery of medieval church windows are familiar (Early English, Decorated, Perpendicular), there has been no really detailed attempt to examine it as a distinct, stylistic architectural form, a gap which this book seeks to address. Based upon a visual catalogue of over 250 images of surviving types and styles from churches throughout England, it traces the progression of ideas and the continuity of motifs and themes in tracery patterns from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, showing how different themes emerged within the main architectural styles; it also looks at the distinction between a window's architectural form and its tracery style, and describes the several different tracery techniques. The volume is completed with a detailed glossary. Stephen Hart is a retired architect, and the author of numerous works, including Flint Flushwork.

This book explains and celebrates the richness of English churches and cathedrals, which have a major place in medieval architecture. The English Gothic style developed somewhat later than in France, but rapidly developed its own architectural and ornamental codes. The author, John Shannon Hendrix, classifies English Gothic architecture in four principal stages: the early English Gothic, the decorated, the curvilinear, and the perpendicular Gothic. Several photographs of these architectural testimonies allow us to understand the whole originality of Britain during the Gothic era: in Canterbury, Wells, Lincoln, York, and Salisbury. The English Gothic architecture is a poetic one, speaking both to the senses and spirit.

Hendrik Petrus Berlage, the Dutch architect and architectural philosopher, created a series of buildings and a body of writings from 1886 to 1909 that were among the first efforts to probe the problems and possibilities of modernism. Although his Amsterdam Stock Exchange, with its rational mastery of materials and space, has long been celebrated for its seminal influence on the architecture of the 20th century, Berlage's writings are highlighted here. Bringing together Berlage's most important texts, among them "Thoughts on Style in Architecture", "Architecture's Place in Modern Aesthetics", and "Art and Society", this volume presents a chapter in the history of European modernism. In his introduction, Iain Boyd Whyte demonstrates that the substantial contribution of Berlage's designs to modern architecture cannot be fully appreciated without an understanding of the aesthetic principles first laid out in his writings.

Hubsch's argument that the technical progress and changed living habits of the nineteenth century rendered neoclassical principles antiquated is presented here along with responses to his essay by architects, historians, and critics over two decades.