Synagogues (The Great Architecture Series) [Hardcover]

Samuel D. Gruber (Author)

Book Description

Series: The Great Architecture Series | Publication Date: March 1999

Hardcover Book

Product Details

• Hardcover: 120 pages
• Publisher: MetroBooks (NY) (March 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1567997422
• ISBN-13: 978-1567997422
• Product Dimensions: 12.3 x 10.6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #567,405 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars What's Wrong With This Picture?, January 2, 2002

By 

D. Cushman (Sharon, MA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Synagogues (The Great Architecture Series) (Hardcover)

What's wrong is that Samuel Gruber basically gets away with a slipshod job because books on synagogue architecture are hard to find, expensive to produce and scholarship is limited. So, if you're starting a collection you simply can't NOT have "Synagogues," from The Great Architecture Series.

The book's necessity, however, doesn't make it a good book. And neither do the undeniably beautiful photographs. I don't know if The Great Architecture Series produces all books this way, but "Synagogues" looks to have been done "on the cheap." Many photographs are printed without margins and too many have captions on a different page, some even have captions more than one page away, so one is forced to flip back and forth between pages to look at a building and to read about it. This spells C-H-E-A-P. It's even hard to identify the cover photograph and those immediately inside. Detail shots can hang you up seemingly forever.

It's like the old excuse for buying "Playboy Magazine" -- but in reverse. Buy this book, NOT for the articles, only for the pictures. The text is disorganized, unhelful, incomplete and a little shy of accurate for some of the sticklers among us.

However, Samuel Gruber has, to date, done what no one else has --assembled a coffee table book on synagogue architecture around the world and throughout history. And he's to be justly credited with that achievement. The book provides hours of enjoyment and is sure to open the eyes of many a neophyte synagogue architecture scholar and any lay readers. I'd suggest the book as an ideal bat/bar mitzvah gift, but if you care to send the very best, you'd better wait until something better comes along. I'd buy the book only for a good friend and would present it with lots of caveats like "I know the captions are hard to find, but the pictures are so pretty..."

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Engaging and attractive, January 16, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Synagogues (The Great Architecture Series) (Hardcover)

Gruber is a casual and enthusiastic writer and states up front that he is relatively new to the subject. Its nuggets of information are concise and perfectly appropriate for a beginning student. The photographs alone are worth the price of the book but if you're looking to identify the synagogues and the details in the photos, you may have to do a bit of wandering since the captions are scattered about and are set in very small type. Put aside your qualms about the editorial judgements and the publisher's intent and enjoy this book if you can find it.

4.0 out of 5 stars beautiful book, September 16, 2011

By 

booksmart - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Synagogues (The Great Architecture Series) (Hardcover)

the colors and the pictures of this book are beautiful; you have to search a bit for captions, but I think that if you buy it more for the pictures than the explanations, you're fine. Excellent coffee table book.