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The Parthenon in Athens makes the cut, as does the Pantheon in Rome. Hagia Sophia in Istanbul and Notre-Dame in Paris get the nod. Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum in New York City and Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, do too. They’re among the usual suspects in the latest who’s who of important buildings, Witold Rybczynski’s The Story of Architecture. There’s not much to debate about their inclusion as they remain venerated architectural artifacts, not yet torn down or unmentionable because of aberrant associations recently identified.

Somewhat surprisingly, however, Antoni Gaudí gets multiple pages. (Arguably, the Spanish architect is more eccentric outsider than essential practitioner, though perhaps he did anticipate the starchitects of today.) Rybczynski also bestows attention on the Englishman Quinlan Terry, a questionable decision given that many consider him a historicist who’d have done better to copy traditional buildings...