The reader reprints extracts of key historical texts - those of Daniel Bell on the post-industrial society and Jean-Francois Lyotard on the post-modern condition. The new cultural logic of contested pluralism is analysed in seminal papers by Andreas Hyssen and Jim Collins. The fundamental ideas on post-modern literature are defined by Umberto Eco, John Barth and David Lodge and the theories they present challenge the notion of post-modernism as an ultra avant-garde movement and the expression of a consumer society. For this second edition of the book, Charles Jencks presents a new overview of the Post-Modern, reflecting its maturity as a movement.
Charles Alexander Jencks (born 21 June 1939) is an American architecture theorist and critic, landscape architect and designer. His books on the history and criticism of modernism and postmodernism are widely read in architectural circles. He studied under the influential architectural historians Sigfried Giedion and Reyner Banham. Jencks now lives in Scotland where he designs landscape sculpture.
Interesting point of view about po-mo being not the next step of mo but rather an equal yet different movement. The book looks at that not only in architectural, but rather in universal context.