Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture by Penguin (Non-Classics) $15.00
Ross King has a knack for explaining complicated processes in a manner that is not only lucid but downright intriguing. . . . Fascinating." (Los Angeles Times) By all accounts, Filippo Brunelleschi, goldsmith and clockmaker, was an unkempt, cantankerous, and suspicious man-even by the generous standards according to which artists were judged in fifteenth-century Florence. He also designed and...

How to Read Churches: A Crash Course in Ecclesiastical Architecture by Rizzoli $17.95
Small enough to fit in a pocket yet serious enough to provide real answers, this primer is a must-have for architecture and history buffs, tourists, and churchgoers interested in decoding the styles and symbols of religious buildings. Every building contains clues embedded in its design that identify not only its architectural style but also who designed it, what kind of congregation it was built...

How to Read a Church: A Guide to Symbols and Images in Churches and Cathedrals by HiddenSpring $18.00
Churches and cathedrals were originally built to be read. They are alive with images and symbols--all of which are packed with meaning. But today few people, from regular visitors to tourists, truly understand the wealth of meaning in what they find there. How to Read a Church is must reading for anybody who wants to know more about what they see in a church or cathedral. It explores the...

Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres (Penguin Classics) by Ray Carney $17.00
Mont Saint Michel and Chartres is a record not of a literal jouney but of a meditative journey across time and space into the medieval imagination. Using the architecture, sculpture, and stained glass of the two locales as a starting point, Adams breathes life into what others might see merely as monuments of a past civilization. With daring and inventive conceits, Adams looks at the ordinary...

The Gothic Enterprise: A Guide to Understanding the Medieval Cathedral by University of California Press $35.00
The great Gothic cathedrals of Europe are among the most astonishing achievements of Western culture. Evoking feelings of awe and humility, they make us want to understand what inspired the people who had the audacity to build them. This engrossing book surveys an era that has fired the historical imagination for centuries. In it Robert A. Scott explores why medieval people built Gothic...

Basilica: The Splendor and the Scandal: Building St. Peter's by Plume $16.00
In this dramatic journey through religious and artistic history, R. A. Scotti traces the defining event of a glorious epoch: the building of St. Peter?s Basilica. Begun by the ferociously ambitious Pope Julius II in 1506, the endeavor would span two tumultuous centuries, challenge the greatest Renaissance masters?Michelangelo, Raphael, and Bramante?and enrage Martin Luther. By the time it was...

Sacred Strategies: Transforming Synagogues from Functional to Visionary by The Alban Institute $20.00
Sacred Strategies is about eight synagogues that reached out and helped people connect to Jewish life in a new way--congregations that had gone from commonplace to extraordinary. Over a period of two years, researchers Aron, Cohen, Hoffman, and Kelman interviewed 175 synagogue leaders and a selection of congregants (ranging from intensely committed to largely inactive). They found these...

Great Cathedrals by Harry N. Abrams $125.00
From Chartres to the cathedral of Florence, this volume covers the major Romanesque and Gothic cathedrals in France, England, Germany, Italy and Spain. Over 300 photographs showing the cathedrals inside and out, including close-up architectural and sculptural details and an authoritative text, combine to produce a survey of these buildings.

The Famous Missions of California by Kessinger Publishing $15.95
The missions which thus represented a slight and temporary revival of the old spirit of enterprise, were those of San Rafael Arcángel and San Francisco Solano. The former, located near Mount Tamalpais, between San Francisco de Assis and the Russian military station at Fort Ross, dates from the 17th December, 1817; the latter, situated still further north, in the Sonoma Valley, from the 4th July,...

ARS SACRA: Christian Art in the Western World by Rolf Toman $199.00
Superbly researched texts take the reader on a tour through the epochs and highlight the specific changes in sacral art, architecture and culture. The viewer seems close enough to touch the objects, and magnified images delight even in the finest details.