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CONSTANCY AND CHANGE IN ARCHITECTURE

form regions--not just individual landforms--and it does so in a way that allows the reader to see these regions as pieces of a larger picture that extends beyond state boundaries. However, the author had some difficulty in deciding exactly what the audience might already know about landforms and the principles of geomorphology. Do you, as the author, assume that the reader has no knowledge of these principles? If you do, then you must explain and illustrate all of the pertinent basic principles before you can go on to apply them to descriptions of landforms. On the other hand, if you assume some previous knowledge, then where exactly do you draw the line? Any book written to develop an understanding of regional landforms should provide detailed explanations of all the important concepts that describe those landforms. This is where the book remains somewhat deficient. Many important concepts are inadequately described, leaving them comprehensible only to those readers who already have an understanding of the concepts. An effective solution would be to provide illustrations to accompany all of the important concepts described in the text. While this approach would present the author with an enormous task, it would significantly improve the understandability for all readers. The description of the Silurian Escarpment that forms the southwest edge of the Paleozoic Plateau in northeast Iowa is a good example. This landform--dipping sedimentary rock, a cuesta, and outliers--is described only with words. For those who understand these formations, words may be adequate. For those who do not, no description, no matter how eloquent, could equal a well-drawn illustration. Similarly, descriptions of the patterns and processes of ice decay and their associated landforms, karst, the deposition of loess, and many others would be more easily understood if they were illustrated. The landform descriptions may not be completely accessible to all landscape observers, but the book provides a view of the Iowa landscape that is otherwise difficult to achieve. This book should be useful to anyone trying to develop an understanding of the Iowa landscape. It should be equally useful to those in neighboring states who are interested in landform regions that extend beyond the borders of Iowa. For those who find interpretation of landforms an indispensable component of an understanding of the broader American landscape, Landforms of Iowa will help to complete one piece of that larger picture.Jean Prior has taken an important step in interpreting the landforms of a gion to a wide range of readers. It is hoped that more books will follow that allow all those who interpret the broader landscape to have access to an understanding of landforms. Thomas Yahner is Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802.