A collection of essays on architecture by the former architecture critic of the San Francisco Chronicle (from 1961 to 1993), who won the Pulitzer prize for criticism in 1990. The response to architecture and urban design, in the city of San Francisco and the San Francisco bay area, is vivid, illuminating and frequently very amusing. The impact of architecture on location, both near and regional, is as much a part of the book as are the sensibility and dexterity of tempo’s writing, as a tool for observation of the built-environment.