---

This collection by "architectural history´s most beguiling essayist" (as Reinhold Martin calls the author in the book´s foreword) illuminates the unfamiliar, the arcane, the obscure - phenomena largely missing from architectural and landscape history. These essays by Edward Eigen do not walk in a straight line, but roam across uncertain territory, discovering sunken forests, unclassifiable islands, inflammable skies, unvisited shores, plagiarized tabernacles. Taken together, these texts offer a group portrait of how certain things fall apart.

---

"With great wit and extraordinary knowledge - skillfully supported by writing that makes us pay nothing yet delivers everything - this book guides us into the rich subject of accident and anecdote as forms of historical criticism. Riveting accounts of landscapes, architectures, and the thickness of life bring the central epistemological dilemmas of our time into exquisite relief. A brilliant book." - Catherine Ingraham, Professor of Architecture, Pratt Institute; author of Architecture and the Burdens of Linearity

---

Edward Eigen is Associate Professor of History of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and Associate Editor of Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes. His writing has appeared in Cabinet, Pamphlet, Grey Room, and other publications.

---