When you produce a book, you hope for good reviews. Bad reviews, though, are a close second-best. They hold the promise of a dramatic event, where sparks fly outward to kindle more interesting conversations. It was in this spirit of looking forward to second-best that I read RECORD's recent review of Inscriptions: Architecture Before Speech, a book I recently co-edited with K. Michael Hays. Instead of catalyzing an event, I was disappointed to find it merely repeats exactly those tropes Inscriptions was produced to overcome. Perhaps some public airing could recover a sense of liveness, maybe even combustion.
Inscriptions: Architecture Before Speech, edited by K. Michael Hays and Andrew Holder. Harvard University Press, 624 pages, $60.
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