From the oddball postmodernism of the mostly conceptual Chicago Spire to the artfully low-slung eves of Frank Lloyd Wright's Prairie Homes, Chicago's buildings do not allow you to pass by without telling their own stories.

BBC: The infamous architecture of Chicago

What this meant on the page changed over time, in stories and essays that ranged from playful postmodernism to sardonic surrealism, in language that dazzled with a semantic mix of high and low.

ECONOMIST: The fevered imaginings of a dazzling American writer

That led to 1970s postmodernism, less a period of creative vitality than of confusing signals and flawed buildings, a half-understood historical recall supposedly leavened with irony in the way past and present were combined.

WSJ: When the Outrageous Became Mainstream

We have learned, after the pretensions and passementerie of postmodernism, that less can be a relief, and that there may be something close to the divine in the conscientious and beautiful execution of a building's essential elements.

WSJ: How Less Became More

Postmodernism for moppets, pastiche for the potty-trained.

NEWYORKER: Shrek the Third

Postmodernism was the flavor of the decade, and I remember talking to Robert Venturi, who was kind of the godfather of postmodernism, and he hated practically everything called postmodern architecture and was uneasy with all that he had wrought.

NEWYORKER: Search and Destroy

Postmodernism calls the shots today.

FORBES: The Left Can't Have It Both Ways