History of Interior Design

Description

History of Interior Design : Ireland, Jeannie: desertcart.co.uk: Books Review: Textbooks are so over priced. Maybe I should have been a textbook writer. Sigh. This textbook is really good and probably something every interior design student/graduate should have to reference. I’m glad I didn’t have to pay quite the full price. It was brand new, shrink wrapped with the online materials. As described. Review: The book is beautiful. It has good design and nice pictures, however, when you read the text it becomes clear that it was not written or reviewed by a trained historian. For example, the chapters on colonial America and on the nineteenth-century United States only mentions "slaves" once in passing and does discuss slavery at all. While the chapters discusses historical trends, such as the history of European settlement and industrialization, the fundamental reason much of the architecture and design existed in America, slavery and its profound social and economic impacts, isn't even mentioned. And the English, French, and Dutch colonial sections do not discuss Native Americans at all--the text mentions the beaver trade but never says who the Europeans were trading with. While the book should and does focus on design, it needs to be edited to better reflect the realities of colonization. The other histories, such as those of the ancient world are generally okay, but the text demonstrates an outdated approach to history with statements such as "From the Chinese Bronze Age c. 1500 BC Chinese culture developed continuously, and although the nation was invaded numerous times, the culture remained relatively unchanged until the twentieth century," (110) really? the "The goal of the Crusades to reclaim territory lost to Muslim invaders . . ." (175). The book has its uses, but with so many students having so little knowledge of history, it's important that textbooks on design history be accurate and comprehensive.