Read Art Deco: A Complete History

Art Deco is the style the twentieth century gave itself when it wanted to celebrate: geometry instead of tendrils, speed instead of history, luxury made by machines and finished by hand. Born in Paris before 1914, named by an exhibition in 1925, it dressed the Chrysler Building, the Normandie, the Odeon cinema and the Bombay apartment house in one shared language of zigzags, sunbursts and setbacks. This book follows that language from its Parisian cradle to its furthest colonies and its strange second life — demolition, rediscovery, and a preservation movement that turned a joke style into world heritage.