This work draws together the results of the author's teaching and research to address the essential fact of architecture and human life on earth: the relation of mankind to the natural order. Tracing the roots of Western architecture leads him to Pre-Columbian America, Egypt, and the ancient Near East; to the Greeks, who developed the most harmonious architecture ever built; the Romans, whose perfectly controlled interiors provided the means for an architecture which realized the transcendance of nature and paved the way for the splendour of the Gothic cathedral. Later chapters follow the rise of modern urbanism and with it the reinvention of the garden as a major architectural form. Professor Scully shows how Le Corbusian principles grow directly out of this relation to nature and places the skyscraper in juxtaposition with the pyramids. Vincent Scully is the author of The Earth, the Temple and the Gods and Pueblo: Mountain, Village, Dance.