Hello! My name is Janet White, and I am the author of this textbook. If you have any questions about it, you came reach me at janet.white@unlv.edu .

The history of the built environment is the history of everything built by human hands. It includes buildings, but also parks and gardens, cities, bridges, highways, and so forth. It includes both structures designed by design professionals and structures built by everyday people.  This text focuses primarily on the work of design professionals, but also occasionally includes work by ordinary people, known as vernacular architecture.

I have been teaching the history of the built environment for more than twenty years, and for most of those years students have been asking me to put my lecture notes in written form. That is what this textbook is an attempt to do. It does not substitute for lectures, but makes the material available to you in another format.  I hope you will find it useful as you begin your study of the history of your future profession.