American Beauty

We live in an era of public ugliness, of architects who deliberately make their forms unsightly and inhuman, and of public art installations that are invariably ridiculous.

The most obvious exception is the ballpark, which has gotten more beautiful rather than less is a great example of renewal through a return to tradition.

Paul Goldberger, a former architecture writer for The New York Times, traces this journey in his wonderful new book "Ballpark."

He rightly calls the ballpark "one of the greatest of all American building types" and argues that "as much as the town square, the street, the p...