I became acquainted with the works of Palladio after taking an art history class that focused on the relevant time period. I was impressed with his designs but a little surprised that Palladio is not given much recognition by those outside of the world of architecture. This book helps, at least in some ways, to set things right.

This book includes a brief biography on Andrea Palladio with insight on his _The Four Books of Architecture_. It also mentions the introduction that many Americans have to Palladian architecture-Thomas Jefferson. The scope of his influence on Jefferson is evident simply by looking at Monticello and the University of Virginia.

The authors divide Palladio's works into three categories: villas, palaces and churches. They also include Palladian designs in England, Scotland and America. Each design is profiled with pictures and given roughly 2 - 4 paragraphs of description. The information provided is easy to read but not so simplistic that it seems superficial. The photographs are excellent and often show fascinating detail. Unfortunately though, all photos are b/w and sometimes color would have been helpful. That reason and the basic nature of the text caused me to rate this at four stars rather than five. Experts and scholars should look elsewhere unless they are only after the illustrations. For students and casual observers, this book is a fantastic way to begin learning about Palladio.

At this point in time I am reading "Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology" for a class that I am currently attending. My class is wonderful, but this book is very dry. I understand that the subject of cognitive psychology involves a lot of research and data and all this information is important to the study of this subject, but this book is very dry and personally boring. The whole book is a review of past research and analyzations of the subject and the author gives no thought of his own to the subject. If I wanted to know every little detail of every cognitive experiment I would look that exact experiment up. There is no basis of the book and it does not help me in the least little bit in my studies. The content is very dry and not attention holding. I would definately look into something else as far as books go if I wanted something interesting!!!

As an undergraduate TA, I became familiar with this book when my supervising professor chose it for her undergraduate learning and cognition course. The text presents detailed coverage of the topics in an accessible style. I disagree with the previous reviewer about the value of the discussion of previous experiments. By providing a discussion of selected experiments rather than an exhaustive survey of the empirical literature, the intricacies of problem solving activity in cognitive psychology are highlighted. The text uses a thematic approach throughout, and incorporates real world examples, case studies, and useful examples of experiments on specific topics. I found myself wishing that this text had been used in the cognition course that I had previously taken.