James Crawford with Fallen Glory

James Crawford’s Fallen Glory brings us the biographies of 20 fascinating buildings that have fallen into ruin or oblivion spanning right from the Tower of Babel into the digital age.

Crawford demonstrates how buildings can live and die just as much as people; they have parents in the form of kings, gods, visionaries or madmen, friends who support them and enemies who call for their destruction. The lives of these buildings are populated by the great characters of history, from Caesar to Hitler, Gilgamesh to Catherine the Great, and their halls filled with drama and intrigue.

This globe-trotting architectural history guides us through these vanished monuments and examines what the ruins of the past can reveal to us about ourselves and our futures.

James Crawford studied History and Philosophy of Law at the University of Edinburgh, winning the Lord President Cooper Memorial Prize, and currently works for Scotland’s National Collection of Architecture and Archaeology. His previous publications include a number of photographic books, and he recently wrote and acted as a design consultant on Telling Scotland’s Story, a graphic novel-style guide to Scottish Archaeology published by the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.