Buildings Across Time offers a survey of world architecture both for students taking introductory courses and for the general reader simply interested in buildings. The authors have searched out the stories these buildings have to tell, considered the intentions of the people who built them, and examined the lives of those who used them. The text begins with prehistory and ends with early twenty-first century. It covers the Western tradition as well as works in the Islamic world, the pre-Columbian Americas, Africa, China, Southeast Asia, Russia, and Japan.

Buildings Across Time is a diverse sampling of the built environment written in a straightforward but lively style that is rich with detail. The text contains extensive descriptive narrative leavened with focused critical analysis, which allows the book to stand alone and invites lecturers to impose their studied interpretations on the material without the danger of undue ambiguity or conflict. In a world that grows smaller by the day, it presents a global perspective, and in a discipline that concerns built objects that are often beautiful as well as functional, it is copiously illustrated, intelligently designed, and consistently usable.