Obsolescence: An Architectural History, by Daniel M. Abramson, University of Chicago Press, February 2016, 208 pages, $35.

While all buildings are subject to the decay and ruin brought by time, historian Daniel Abramson is concerned in this book with a different culprit: obsolescence, or the process of becoming “obsolete.” In his analysis, this term refers to structures demolished for having outmoded mechanical systems, or insufficient rentable space, or a suddenly unappealing stylistic expression, among many other factors. Such buildings might have survived were it not for shifting economic standards, desires, or tastes. Abramson’s overriding concern—as in much of his previous work—is how architecture functions within capitalism, a system which operates by “creative destruction,” as economic historian Joseph Schumpeter first phrased it in 1942. This relentless transformation, Abramson argues, is at odds with a core principle of Western architecture: solidity.