Phaidon books, in my opinion, are worth their (considerable) weight in gold. This is a pretty old one (1997), I think they've gotten better recently from what I've seen, but this was (almost) exactly what I was looking for. Phaidon publishes extremely high-quality, well-formatted 'coffee table' type books with beautiful colour plates, and they are usually very well-written and organised. This was a great guide to the main ideas and development of neoclassicism, from antiquarian studies, to painting, sculpture, etc. I wish it had been more analytical, but I suppose you can't have everything. David Irwin gave a good, lucid explanations of the ideas and values underlying neoclassicism, what motivated the classical revival, and how it developed. There was nothing I found groundbreaking, but I don't think there was supposed to be. The colour plates and other prints were really well-chosen and complimented the text very well. But Irwin did misuse the same Byron quote that the Byron bio I talked about earlier, much to my frustration. Overall though, very informative, well-organised and presented.
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