Cathedral .The Story of Its Construction [Hardcover]

David Macaulay (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Boston: Houghton Mifflin (1990) Rp (1990)
• ASIN: B000YRHJY4
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)

More About the Author

David Macaulay is an award-winning author and illustrator whose books have sold millions of copies in the United States alone, and his work has been translated into a dozen languages. Macaulay has garnered numerous awards including the Caldecott Medal and Honor Awards, the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, the Christopher Award, an American Institute of Architects Medal, and the Washington Post-Children's Book Guild Nonfiction Award. In 2006, he was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, given "to encourage people of outstanding talent to pursue their own creative, intellectual, and professional inclinations." Superb design, magnificent illustrations, and clearly presented information distinguish all of his books. David Macaulay lives with his family in Vermont.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful introduction to architecture and the Middle Ages, January 9, 2004

By 

JLind555 - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

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This review is from: Cathedral: The Story of Its Construction (Paperback)

Having just finished a great book called "Great Cathedrals", filled with 400 pages of jaw-dropping photographs, I kept wondering how in the world they could have built such marvelous edifices with rudimentary implements over 800 years ago. David Macaulay's "Cathedral" is a book ostensibly written for children but which will fascinate readers of all ages. In scarcely 80 pages, Macaulay takes us back in time to the year 1252 in the fictional French village of Chutreaux where the people decide to build the "longest, widest, highest and most beautiful cathedral in all of France" for the glory of God. Macaulay's text is minimal, but his exquisite black and white line drawings say it all: the step-by-step stages in the building's construction, the craftsmen and the tools they used, and the dedication that kept this project going for 80 years until its completion. We feel a sense of awe at the dedication of the original architects and craftsmen and builders who knew that they would be long dead before the cathedral was finally finished. Macaulay's glossary at the end of the book helps us to understand the major elements of the Gothic cathedral, and his cross-sections and diagrams provide clear illustration of just how the cathedral rose from its foundations. At the end of this volume, we share the awe and pride the townspeople felt at having shared a goal for over 80 years and making it a reality. Macaulay's "Cathedral" is a marvelous creation in more ways than one.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent introduction to cathedral research, October 23, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Cathedral: The Story of Its Construction (Paperback)

Pyramids, temples, castles, cathedrals - humanity built like giants in olden days. We ponder these structures in photographs, gape at them as tourists. How could such mighty edifices have been erected during eras lacking bulldozers and derricks?

This book answers the question so far as a cathedral is concerned. (What distinguishes a cathedral from other churches is that a bishop regularly performs rites there. Cathedrals built during medieval times tended toward monumental design; however, huge size is not a universal characteristic of cathedrals. Some are smaller than parish churches. The difference in size depended on the economic prosperity of the community paying for the construction.) An army of workers toiled nearly a century to build this Christian edifice. Stone, glass, timbers and lead were shaped and fitted together in an towering assembly.

No photograph of say, Notre Dame or Rheims, could capture the skill and toil involved in the building of these cathedrals. They are a fait accompli, magnificent but finished. Cities today do not construct churches on such a scale; the cost would be astronomical. Portraying past methods must be hypothetical. A researcher has to harvest old records, drawings, testimonies penned by long dead writers, and from all project the artisans, tools, and techniques as an imaginary cathedral in an imaginary city in France. Nearly every page in CATHEDRAL displays a pen and ink drawing of each stage in the construction. The type of Christian church focused on is the gothic, distinguished by its overall crucifix shape, bell towers, spires, gargoyles, and flying buttresses.

The size of CATHEDRAL - 9 by 12 inches - the profuse drawings, the unembellished prose, imply this is a book aimed at the high school and junior high level. A thin book (80) readings pages, one ought to read it in an hour without strain. To say this much and no more suggests CATHEDRAL does not merit older readers. A curious adult would find this book interesting as well as informative. It gives the reader insight into what is perhaps the greatest engineering feat of the middle ages, an undertaking so immense that a boy at its commencement would die of old age before the cathedral's doors opened to its first congregation.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars not only for children, July 28, 2003

By 

Rafael L Medina (Tegucigalpa, MDC Honduras) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cathedral: The Story of Its Construction (Paperback)

It is indeed a book that can be read easily in a couple of hours. However, if you read "between the drawings", if I may say so, you will discover a very deep knowledge of structural design. In fact, I had the chance to read first John Fitchen's The Construction of Gothic Cathedrals, and I can assure that I enjoyed Mr. Macaulay's work much more. Perhaps "Cathedral. The Story of Its Construction" falls short in words and should have been beefed up with more text. Still, I recommend this book. It is hard to find another book with drawings so detailed showing perhaps the most accurate construction means used by the medieval builders, from the very beginning of the construction of these espiritual and community gothic buildings to the end.