Stairs: Their History and Your Fear of Them

F. Cantilever opens the book with a statistic that he cites and then immediately questions: that falls on stairs account for a significant portion of household injuries annually. He questions it not because it is wrong — he believes it is correct — but because he thinks we should consider what it means that we built all of these stairs anyway.

The history portion of the book is thorough. Cantilever traces the stair from ancient Mesopotamia through the grand staircases of the Baroque period to the fire escape and the emergency exit. His particular interest is in stairs that were built to impress: the stairs you have to look up at. He is not sure we should have built so many of those.

The second half of the book is about fear. Not metaphorical fear. Actual fear of stairs — bathmophobia, the dread of slopes and stairs — and what Cantilever believes it tells us about the implicit contract between a building and its inhabitants. A building that makes you afraid to use the stairs has, he argues, broken something fundamental.

The book ends on a landing. Cantilever considers this appropriate.