The Walls Around Us: The Thinking Person's Guide to How a House Works (1991)

The Walls Around Us is a great book for any homeowner -- especially the owner of any not-so-new house. With great humor and curiosity, Owen describes all the parts of a house, how they work and what could go wrong. Within the first two chapters alone, I stopped myself several times to think -- he said what I always said, only better.

This is not a contractor's manual, and there are no discussions of which tools to use, or how. But this book will help you think more intelligently about your house, caring for it, and dealing with contractors. ( )

More interesting than I expected, this is a description of how houses are built and something of the science of the pieces that go into them.

I'd like it to have been a larger text covering the same subject, with more emphasis on the science and on how the building industry is changing, and less on home repair, but even with its flaws this was a remarkably interesting book. ( )

Everything has a history, even walls. I found out about foam inserts for light switches and power outlets from this book.