Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Learning from Las Vegas created a healthy controversy on its appearance in 1972, calling for architects to be more receptive to the tastes and values of "common" people and less immodest in their erections of "heroic," self-aggrandizing monuments.

This revision includes the full texts of Part I of the original, on the Las Vegas strip, and Part II, "Ugly and Ordinary Architecture, or the Decorated Shed," a generalization from the findings of the first part on symbolism in architecture and the iconography of urban sprawl. (The final part of the first edition, on the architectural work of the firm Venturi and Rauch, is not included in the revision.) The new paperback edition has a smaller format, fewer pictures, and a considerably lower price than the original. There are an added preface by Scott Brown and a bibliography of writings by the members of Venturi and Rauch and about the firm's work.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Preface to the First Edition (p. xi)
• Preface to the Revised Edition (p. xv)
• Part I A Significance for A&P Parking Lots, or Learning from Las Vegas
• A Significance for A&P Parking Lots, or Learning from Las Vegas (p. 3)
• Commercial Values and Commercial Methods (p. 3)
• Billboards Are Almost All Right (p. 6)
• Architecture as Space (p. 6)
• Architecture as Symbol (p. 7)
• Symbol in Space before Form in Space: Las Vegas as a Communication System (p. 8)
• The Architecture of Persuasion (p. 9)
• Vast Space in the Historical Tradition and at the A&P (p. 13)
• From Rome to Las Vegas (p. 18)
• Maps of Las Vegas (p. 19)
• Main Street and the Strip (p. 19)
• System and Order on the Strip (p. 20)
• Change and Permanence on the Strip (p. 34)
• The Architecture of the Strip (p. 34)
• The Interior Oasis (p. 49)
• Las Vegas Lighting (p. 49)
• Architectural Monumentality and the Big Low Space (p. 50)
• Las Vegas Styles (p. 50)
• Las Vegas Signs (p. 51)
• Inclusion and the Difficult Order (p. 52)
• Image of Las Vegas: Inclusion and Allusion in Architecture (p. 53)
• Studio Notes (p. 73)
• Part II Ugly and Ordinary Architecture, or the Decorated Shed
• Some Definitions Using The Comparative Method (p. 87)
• The Duck and the Decorated Shed (p. 88)
• Decoration on the Shed (p. 89)
• Explicit and Implicit Associations (p. 90)
• Heroic and Original, or Ugly and Ordinary (p. 91)
• Ornament: Signs and Symbols, Denotation and Connotation, Heraldry and Physiognomy, Meaning and Expression (p. 92)
• Is Boring Architecture Interesting? (p. 93)
• Historical And Other Precedents: Towards An Old Architecture (p. 104)
• Historical Symbolism and Modern Architecture (p. 104)
• The Cathedral as Duck and Shed (p. 105)
• Symbolic Evolution in Las Vegas (p. 106)
• The Renaissance and the Decorated Shed (p. 106)
• Nineteenth-Century Eclecticism (p. 107)
• Modern Ornament (p. 114)
• Ornament and Interior Space (p. 115)
• The Las Vegas Strip (p. 116)
• Urban Sprawl and the Megastructure (p. 117)
• Theories Of Ugly And Ordinary And Related And Contrary Theories (p. 128)
• Origins and Further Definition of Ugly and Ordinary (p. 128)
• Ugly and Ordinary as Symbol and Style (p. 129)
• Against Ducks, or Ugly and Ordinary over Heroic and Original, or Think Little (p. 130)
• Theories of Symbolism and Association in Architecture (p. 131)
• Firmness + Commodity Does Not Equal Delight: Modern Architecture and the Industrial Vernacular (p. 134)
• Industrial Iconography (p. 135)
• Industrial Styling and the Cubist Model (p. 136)
• Symbolism Unadmitted (p. 137)
• Form La Tourette to Neiman-Marcus (p. 138)
• Slavish Formalism and Articulated Expressionism (p. 138)
• Articulation as Ornament (p. 139)
• Space as God (p. 148)
• Megastructures and Design Control (p. 148)
• Misplaced Technological Zeal (p. 150)
• Which Technological Revolution? (p. 151)
• Preindustrial Imagery for a Postindustrial Era (p. 151)
• From La Tourette to Levittown (p. 152)
• Silent-White-Majority Architecture (p. 154)
• Social Architecture and Symbolism (p. 155)
• High-Design Architecture (p. 161)
• Summary (p. 162)
• Appendix: On Design Review Boards And Fine Arts Commissions (p. 164)
• Bibliography (p. 167)
• Credits (p. 190)