Radiography of Cultural Material Book

As a reference, Wilkins' book deals out a huge volume of information, designed to uncover over two thousand years of art history--sculpture, architecture, painting, and more. It provides a basic minimum of useful facts and analysis of each topic, marching through art-time with well-chosen and mostly full-color illustrations. For one with relative inexperience and eclectic interests, it's a great book to have on the shelf. It might provide a starting point from which to go more deeply into just about any topic.

It's a handsome book in hard-cover. I used it a lot in getting to know the basic movement of art through Western history, and I enjoyed it as such.