University of Toronto assistant professor Virginia Wright’s Modern Furniture in Canada 1920 to 1970, University of Toronto Press, May) is, on all visual counts, gorgeous – especially today when ultramod is the grunge style of choice. This book is loaded with images, from the plastic-moulded stackable chair by A. J. Donahue and D. Simpson to apartment life in a geodesic dome. It’s too bad Wright didn’t let the adjectives fly with so much seductive material at her fingertips. Instead, she irons this 50-year overview flatter than a modernist cube. Canadian design history may be more copycat than prodigious, but Wright’s uncritical eye doesn’t enlighten readers to the exceptions. Catherine Osborne