An imaginary French town decides to build the tallest, longest, most beautiful cathedral anyone has seen, and David Macaulay draws every step of it. Foundations dug, stone quarried and hauled, scaffolding raised, flying buttresses set against the walls, vaults closed overhead and glass fitted into the tracery. The Cathedral of Chutreaux never existed, and this is still the clearest account of how the real ones went up that a reader is likely to find.

The drawings are pen and ink, cutaway, and enormous, which is why the book took a Caldecott Honor and a place on the New York Times Best Illustrated Books of the Year list. The work spans generations, so the people who begin it never see it finished, and that fact is the quiet spine running under the whole account.

An 80 page paperback, translated into a dozen languages, selected as a Common Core text exemplar for grades six to eight in science, mathematics and technical studies, and a touchstone for anyone who has ever wanted to be an architect. Macaulay's Castle is already at Stellar Luxe.