"Adobe Houses for Today" features 12 plans for compact, beautifully-proportioned adobe homes in modern and traditional styles. Yet the book offers much more. The richly-illustrated text shows how the basic houses, designed for today's smaller families, can be as flexible as a set of building blocks. Intriguing drawings demonstrate how readers can expand and adapt the plans to fit their own budgets, family sizes, style preferences, and building sites. After a brief look at adobe's rich history, "Adobe Houses for Today" surveys adobe's advantages as a building material. Next, readers take an eye-opening tour through the facts and fantasies of energy conservation. Then, the heart of the book illustrates the basic and expanded versions of the plans, using them as examples of design techniques that increase livability and control costs in any house. The book also explains site requirements, adobe construction, and estimating basics with an adobe house that "assembles itself". "Adobe Houses for Today" and its associated construction drawings are valuable, enjoyable tools not only for those buying, building, or remodeling a house, but also for contractors, drafters, drafting teachers, and real estate professionals.