A readable explication of architecture’s role and responsibilities in the world by the London-based de Botton, an eclectic and erudite observer of the world.  Using photographs of buildings from around the world and over the centuries, de Botton argues that architecture while subject to the same unanswerable debate as beauty in art, has a broader impact on society.  He avers that the function is to help people achieve happiness by providing those elements that are lacking in their lives and by achieving universal values—-balance, order, elegance, coherence, and self-knowledge—while preserving local cultural styles and norms.  Critical of the ‘one-off’, one-upmanship of star architects after Horace Walpole’s 18th C Strawberry Hill began the individual style as well as of the Vetruvius/Palladio/Adorno style of rigid rules, he argues for an architecture that responds to our psychological needs and pleases and gives happiness.