Architecture

A difference as small as a beam, a round arch, or a pointed one can redraw the whole history of architecture. T. Roger Smith and John Slater begin by asking us to look not at ornament, but at what spans the space above a doorway.

In this late-19th-century handbook, ancient buildings are more than monuments: they are records of the peoples, climates, and ideas that shaped them. Smith and Slater trace a path from Egyptian and Greek construction to Roman arches and the early Christian styles of East and West, showing how one change in building method can alter a whole structure—and the look of an age. Why did the way builders covered an opening matter so much?

With centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world.

Who are we? We're Cairn Press. Our background is in design, publishing, typography, and technology. These skills fuel our mission to create the highest quality Public Domain eBooks available online, at an affordable price. We give them the treatment they deserve; our proprietary process restores books for a better overall user experience in design, readability, and e-reader compatibility.