Terrific book. Robert Campbell is a opinionated and holds strong convictions. And he really humanizes buildings sometimes even comparing them to people. Vanderwarker does a terrific job keeping the photos from getting too formulaic. It is absolutely fascinating learning the history behind what has changed culturally between the two photos of each location.

Things Campbell believes:
1. A building should fill the block it is on... and if it is on a corner, it should fill it like the Flat Iron.
2. We sacrificed our cities to cars starting in the 50's although possibly this was necessary.
3. Being social was easier in the past as it was simply part of life... but innovations like the car, mobile phones, and malls warp healthy social interaction.
4. Cities are "interesting," have less per capita impact on the environment, and healthier to our humanity than suburbs.
5. Likes it when buildings are re-used, especially when the use it one it was not originally designed for.

Some favorite quotes from the book:
"The greater the speed of travel in a given society, the greater will be the portion of the average citizen's life that is spent in getting from one place to another. Believe it."
"All traveling becomes dull in exact proportion to its rapidity." - John Ruskin
"It exemplifies conceptualistic innuendo pyramided upon spatial forebearance and altogether tokenish of tactile cosmological luminous volumentality" Description of the Carpenter Center at Harbard in a tourist pamphlet. "When the mind dies it exudes rich critical prose" - John Berryman
"No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American people" - H.L. Mencken
"No American lives where he was born or believes what he was taught" - George Santayana