History of Furniture: A Global View

I thought I ordered a new book but received a ugly used book.

Nice big photos and easy to read and understand text. Got it for a class and actually really enjoy reading it. I like that the pages are thick and matte.Good quality.

Great coverage of the history of furniture and includes the significance and acknowledgment of women’s attributions to history as well which is nice because a lot of other texts do not make an effort. Lots of pictures and concise, interesting summaries of individuals that include facts about their personal life, influences, and inspirations.

Great book written by an even better professor!

Good

The writing in this book is very choppy and sometimes it feels like the author uses big words for no reason. most of the time the vocab words are not defined in the chapter at all and have to be looked up in the back of the book. Also, the questions at the end of the chapter feel like lazy attempts and sometimes the answers are not even located in the material and have to be googled in order to answer. This is the worst text book I’ve ever used.

The inaugural IDEC Book and Media Award was presented on Friday, March 18 during the Interior Design Educators Council (IDEC) Annual Conference in Denver, Colorado. The award is given in recognition of the content of an outstanding book or visual media piece that exhibits excellence in addressing issues of discipline of interior design including practice, research, and education.The 2011 winner is "History of Furniture: a Global View" by Mark Hinchman, University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The 604-page, four-color hardcover book was published by Fairchild Books, a division of Conde Nast Publications, in 2009.One nomination letter stated, "The book has the potential to significantly broaden a student's study and understanding of history." Its impact in the classroom was emphasized in another nomination which wrote, "With the use of this text, I have envisioned the potential of new media opportunities. It has stimulated my interest in interactive learning opportunities which I have explored in the form of online matching, ordering and sorting exercises - all based on the material in this text."Olga Kontzias, Executive Editor of Fairchild Books, adds, "On behalf of Fairchild Books we congratulate our author Mark Hinchman. Mark's expertise has led to his becoming the author of the upcoming 3rd edition of our Dictionary of Interior Design. As a department, we are very proud and pleased to have Mark on our `team" of authors and it is an honor to work with such a talented and dedicated individual."The Interior Design Educators Council (IDEC) is an international organization with the mission of advancing interior design education, scholarship and service. Founded in 1963, IDEC has over 800 members. For more information, go online to [...].

This is an extremely useful overview of the development of furniture from the stone age to the present. It does cover the globe. For example, there's a very interesting section on African modernism. The chapters give a lot of architectural and artistic context, so you can see the overall setting in which the furniture would have been used. There are very nice color photographs throughout. My only complaint, which is minor, is that the photo used opposite the first page of each chapter isn't identified, which can be frustrating. I'm not an expert in furniture, but this gave me an excellent sense of the big picture.