Architectural engineer and historian, France François Auguste Choisy is in many ways the ideological link between significant individuals such as Eugène Viollet-le-Duc and Auguste Perret and Vitruvius and Le Corbusier; his influence on the beginnings of the Modern movement was fundamental. Born in 1841, Choisy was the son of an architect practicing in Vitry-le-François in northeastern France. His interests in mathematics and architecture quickly led him to the École Polytechnique under Léonce Reynaud, author of the influential Traité d’architecture (1860; Treaty on Architecture), and eventually to the prestigious École des Ponts et Chaussées. His professional career as civil engineer originated in 1865, while still within the junior ranks of the latter institution, when he was dispatched to the Rhone region; there, he began to investigate the significance of the surrounding Gallo-Roman monuments. During the same year he traveled to Greece, undertaking technical analyses of,...