The eminent architectural historian James Ackerman, author of classic studies on Palladio and Michelangelo, discusses villa building in Western countries at various times and places from ancient Rome to twentieth-century France and America. Ackerman uses the phenomenon of the "country place" as a focus for examining not only the relationship between urban and rural life but also that between building and natural environment and between social, cultural, economic, and political forces and architectural design.
