Last refreshed at 0600GMT Friday The best five books on everything | 30 July 2010

Theory and Design in the First Machine Age

Reyner Banham
Image of Theory and Design in the First Machine Age

He was in love with America and Americana and he showed me that you can be an academic and have an intellect but you can still write about cars. He legitimised the study of pop culture. This book is a perfect history of architecture and design in the first 40 years of the 20th century.