I'm an architecture graduate and I think this is one of the best, if not the best book about Modern Architecture. Frampton's book is other of the bests books about it, and although the most complete, is very dificulty to understand. Benevolo's have a simple language, but not superficial, and, the most liked, have hundreds and hundreds of pictures and drawnings. If you are a professional or someone who don't know a thing about architecture and want to know, this is the book for you. I just think that this book need urgently an update, because passes more than 20 years of architecture since it's last edition and lot of things happened on architecture world scene since. With an update, this surelly becomes the best book about modern architecture. A must have for every architect.

Translated from Italian, this book, with volume 2, is one of the definitive histories of the modern movement. Extremely thorough, this is a dense account, not a quick overview, covering the political and social situations that lead to avant-garde and the movement itself which pre-dated the modern movement. (Is that a sentence?) See volume 2 for anything post WWI.

There's a lot of books about the history of urbanism around there, but this one is one of the best, because, like other Benevolo's books, have a lot of photos and drawnings and less text, but maybe too less to someone who already studied about urbanism history. But because this it is so far the best introduction to the history of the formation of the cities, for architects or not.