Fallen Glory by James Crawford

Fallen Glory by James Crawford

An inviting, fascinating compendium of twenty-one of history's most famous lost places, from the Tower of Babel to the Twin Towers

Buildings are more like us than we realize. They can be born into wealth or poverty, enjoying every privilege or struggling to make ends meet. They have parents--gods, kings and emperors, governments, visionaries and madmen--as well as friends and enemies. They have duties and responsibilities. They can endure crises of faith and purpose. They can succeed or fail. They can live. And, sooner or later, they die.

In Fallen Glory, James Crawford uncovers the biographies of some of the world's most fascinating lost and ruined buildings, from the dawn of civilization to the cyber era. The lives of these iconic structures are packed with drama and intrigue. Soap operas on the grandest scale, they feature war and religion, politics and art, love and betrayal, catastrophe and hope. Frequently their afterlives have been no less dramatic--their memories used and abused down the millennia for purposes both sacred and profane. They provide the stage for a startling array of characters, including Gilgamesh, the Cretan Minotaur, Agamemnon, Nefertiti, Genghis Khan, Henry VIII, Catherine the Great, Adolf Hitler, and even Bruce Springsteen.

The twenty-one structures Crawford focuses on include The Tower of Babel, The Temple of Jerusalem, The Library of Alexandria, The Bastille, Kowloon Walled City, the Berlin Wall, and the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. Ranging from the deserts of Iraq, the banks of the Nile and the cloud forests of Peru, to the great cities of Jerusalem, Istanbul, Paris, Rome, London and New York, Fallen Glory is a unique guide to a world of vanished architecture. And, by picking through the fragments of our past, it asks what history's scattered ruins can tell us about our own future.

Jim Crawford is a Deputy Chief and Fire Marshal for the city of Vancouver, Washington, where he is responsible for business planning, code enforcement, plan approval, fire investigation, and public education. Before arriving to Vancouver, Crawford worked as a Fire Marshal in Portland, Oregon. Crawford has more than 34 years of experience in the fire service, the past 18 in senior management, and has been an active participant at the national level with the United States Fire Administration. The International Fire Marshal's Association (former President), the International Association of Fire Chiefs, and the National Association of Fire Marshals are among the organizations he has served on. He is the current chair of the technical committee on Fire Marshal professional credentials.

He is the author of Brady/Prentice Hall's Fire Prevention: A Complete Approach and a regular contributor to Fire Rescue Magazine. He is the project director for Vision 20/20 (www.strategicfire.org), a national strategy plan for enhancing fire prevention operations in the United States, and has served as adjunct faculty at the National Fire Academy. Crawford has a bachelor's degree in science. Clackamas Community College (OR) awarded him a B.S. in Fire Science.

Concordia University has a bachelor's degree in management and communications. Crawford holds a number of certifications, including the International Code Council's Certified Fire Inspector II designation.