Roman Bezjak: Socialist Modernism Hardcover – October 31, 2011

This is supposed to represent the height of architecture in Eastern Europe during the days of communism. If it is meant to be uninspiring, it is. If an amateur went down the street and took pictures of random buildings in poor light, then published them, it would be like this book. It's very poorly done. Also a very poor source of information or analysis. Too bad because, despite the poor photography, a few of the structures are interesting. I'd like to see good picture of them. I'd like to see pictures of them when they were first erected and compare their present state of disrepair with their original appearance. But the photography is so poor it's hard to tell much about them.

Uno splendido volume fotografico per gli amanti del genere. Poi devo applaudire l onestà e la serietà di Amazon. L ho comperato ad un prezzo, salvo scoprire che il prezzo era sceso notevolmente come da etichetta. Amazon mi ha rimborsato immediatamente la differenza!! Meravigliosa Amazon!

In contrast to another reviewer I don't find this book poorly done: The subject matter is more normal than other books on the topic, there are a lot more residential buildings and a lot less major landmarks, but it shows a much wider range of buildings that many people would never see without extensive travel and local knowledge and portrays them well. To my mind this is not an artistic photography book, the photos serve only to show the buildings and they do this well. If you're interested in seeing a huge variety of socialist modernism architecture not usually depicted in other books this is definitely worth a look.

Ein schöner Bildband. Wie andere Käufer schon bemerkten fehlen leider genauere Angaben zu den abgebildeten Gebäuden (deswegen nur 4 Sterne). Trotzdem ein interessantes Buch. Für "Osteuropa-Architektur-Interessierte" sehr empfehlenswert, da die Motive gut ausgewählt wurden und die Qualität der Fotografien (Aufnahmeorte, Licht, etc.), meiner Meinung nach, wirklich sehr gut ist. Im Vergleich zu anderen Publikationen zu diesem Thema findet man hier auch viele Bauwerke aus mitteleuropäischen Staaten (z. B. Deutschland, Slowakei, Unagrn oder Slowenien).

Not very well produced, but I just love the photographs.

As most of the reviewers, I was also looking into a good photography book of Eastern European architecture during the days of communism.Positive points are that it was great to find more examples from Eastern Block than necessarily USSR. I also give it as a plus that the photography gives you a naked impression of the day-to-day of these structures.However, it misses the inspiring. Some of the buildings feature in other books I have, places where I lived and visited... and indeed it fails to transmit what the architect was envisioning and how its execution impact. I do agree with some comments that more than looking into 'socialism modernism' and its vision, it is more focusing on its decay.In terms of printing quality it is good and size wise, I leave a pic to compare with some other books of same genre.