In this lurid era, when the majority of memoirs seem to be written by tweakers, dopers, dipsomaniacs, kleptomaniacs, or nymphomaniacs, it is indeed a relief to encounter the reminiscences of a diligent and industrious man who exhibits no appetite for infamy. Witold Rybczynski states that his new collection of linked essays “is not quite a memoir,” but it is, in places, almost exactly that – a sort of curriculum vitae that’s bolstered by family history and travel vignettes – and it’s one that’s mercifully free of the ostentatious dysfunction infecting the genre of late.

Rybczynski, an eminent architect, academic, and author of 14 previous books, rightly begins his story with his birth in Edinburgh to parents who had escaped the German invasion of Warsaw just four years earlier. From there, he describes his move to Montreal; his upbringing in a musical, multilingual, and story-rich household; his studies at McGill and subsequent Grand Tour of Europe’s architectural marvels; and his early professional work on social housing projects and children’s theatre sets.

The book’s title essay lays the groundwork for what will become Rybczynski’s defining dilemma: does he strive to become a worldly and affluent figure like his maternal grandfather, or does he lead a more cloistered existence like his paternal grandfather?

My Two Polish Grandfathers proves to be a careful and considered book, written in straightforward, journalistic prose, but one can’t help but feel that it’s too modest for its own good. From a man hailed as “one of today’s most original thinkers,” the reader anticipates some prodigious synthesis of his decades-long career as creator, or a startling revelation about the artistic mind. Instead, the book meekly draws to a close after describing a portico renovation to the front of the author’s house.

Fellow architects, do-it-yourself homebuilders, and craftspeople of all kinds will find much of the content instructive; those with less utilitarian concerns who were lured in by the book’s promising subtitle may be left wanting more.