Reviews

Tansey and Kleiner have collaborated on the most thorough revision since 1970 of one of the central monuments of art-historical study. Extensively reorganized and rewritten, this massive book now contains five more chapters than the 9th edition. Among the beneficiaries are both African and Etruscan art, which each have their own chapter for the first time. Somewhat larger, more colorful illustrations, maps, and chronologies add to the overall improved look of this new version. As before, the prose is dense but readable, focusing primarily on appreciative descriptions of exemplary works and emphasizing the periodicity of artistic style. In a new concluding chapter, the authors acknowledge recent revisionist challenges to this more traditional approach. It's a cursory tip of the hat to postmodernism, followed by unconvincing attempts to legislate categories within the art of the 1980s and 1990s. Far better is the way most of the book deals with earlier eras, so that this remains the benchmark text against which all other general surveys can be measured. An improvement upon an already first-rate work; highly recommended.‘Douglas F. Smith, Oakland P.L., Cal.