Reynar Banham once described architectural history—at its most interesting—as a 'snap-crackle-pop subject.' Nigel Whiteley's critical reading of Banham's writings and ideas brims with informed discussion and sparkles with insights about one of the twentieth century's liveliest and keenest architectural minds.
Joan Ockman, Graduate School of Architecture, Columbia University
...Nigel Whiteley's timely assessment is engaging and important.
London Times
...Whitely does an excellent job of presenting the many complex layers of Banham's achievements as a historian and critic.
Architectural Record
Reyner Banham's wide-ranging explorations of modern architecture, commercial design, pop culture, and radical urbanism bristled with so many provocative insights that his career's trajectory resisted clear understanding. Now, fortunately, Nigel Whiteley has skillfully reconstructed the personal experiences and intellectual contexts from which Banham emerged as one of the late twentieth-century's most idiosyncratic and perpetually rewarding cultural critics.
Jeffrey L. Meikle, Chair, Department of American Studies, University of Texas at Austin
Nigel Whiteley ingeniously pulls together the various strands of Reyner Banham's thought. He charts the development of Banham's diverse interests and provides a much-needed critical analysis of his long career as a historian and critic of architecture and design.
Victor Margolin, Professor of Design History, University of Illinois at Chicago
Along the arc of his distinguished career, from work in an aircraft factory in Bristol, England, to criticism of a solar telescope at Kitt Peak in the Arizona desert, Reyner Banham embraced his time with head and heart. Nigel Whiteley gives a nuanced presentation of Banham's principled flexibility. Readers new to Banham's writing will find vivid analysis, while those already familiar with his ideas will discover fresh insights.
Kevin Harrington, Professor of Architectural History, Illinois Institute of Technology
Nigel Whiteley expertly maps the daunting intellectual range and enduring architectural principles of the last of the great Modernist historians and polemicists. More impressively, Whiteley captures the playfulness, the mischievous wit, and the delight in playing the provocateur that distinguished Banham in person as well as on the printed page.
Dell Upton, Department of Architecture, University of California at Berkeley
...Nigel Whiteley's brilliant analysis has the energy and scope of Banham's best writing...
The Washington Post Book World