Building Big, the companion book to a five part PBS television series about major engineering feats around the world was published in 2000 and two years later Rome and pigeons once again took center stage for a book called Angelo. In September of 1999 a twenty-fifth anniversary edition of Cathedral called Building the Book Cathedral was published…during the twenty-sixth year. 1997 saw the publication of a pigeon lead tour of the Eternal City called Rome Antics, and in the fall of 1998, The New Way Things Work, a revised edition of the ’88 book lumbered onto the stands. The second is an account of the building of the caravel based on information present in the first. The first revolves around the discovery of the remains of an early sixteenth century Spanish caravel in the Caribbean and its subsequent interpretation. In 1993 he published Ship in which two stories are told – one leading to the other. In it he offers four separate stories which can also be read as one.

It was followed by Black and White (1990), a considerably slimmer volume and winner of the 1991 Caldecott Medal. Macaulay is probably best known for a very thick book called The Way Things Work (1988), an exhaustively researched compendium of the how’s and whys of almost anything that functions. In Baaa (1985) sheep are left at the world’s helm after mankind has gone and an age-old riddle is answered at last in Why the Chicken Crossed the Road (1987). His other works include: Great Moments in Architecture (1978), a catalogue of imaginary architectural fiascoes, Motel of the Mysteries (1979), a future archeologists examination of a present-day Holiday Inn, and Mill (1983), a chronicle of the growth of a New England mill town. He then constructed a colonial Roman town (City, 1974), erected monuments to the Pharaohs (Pyramid, 1975), dissected the maze of subterranean systems below and essential to every major city (Underground, 1976), built a medieval fortress (Castle, 1977) and dismantled the Empire State Building (Unbuilding, 1980). In January 1973, Macaulay was off to France to work on Cathedral, which was published the following fall.

While the gargoyle never survived the first presentation, the accompanying drawing of a partially finished cathedral fared much better. One result of this tinkering was a book idea about a gargoyle beauty pageant set in medieval France. The next four years were spent working in interior design, teaching junior and senior high school art and tinkering with the idea of making books. He received his degree in 1969 after spending his fifth year with RISD’s European Honors Program in Rome. An early fascination with simple technology and a love of model making and drawing ultimately led him to study architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design. Born on December 2, 1946, David Macaulay was eleven when his family moved from England to the United States.

Pbs cathedral david macaulay