Navajo Architecture may well be the most complete study to date of the folk architecture of a tribal society. Enhanced by nearly 200 photographs and drawings, the book explores the whole range of a Native American tradition as it has evolved through the present day—and is already yielding to modernization.
 
Stephen C. Jett and Virginia E. Spencer have devoted years of fieldwork to studying the origin, evolution, and construction of Navajo buildings: not only hogans, houses, and summer dwellings, but also numerous other structures related to activities such as food preparation, hunting, sweat-bathing, and funerary observation. In addition, they have defined the geographic distribution of dwelling forms to reveal both utilization of local resources and local differences in degree of acculturation.

Stephen C. Jett, professor and chairperson of the Department of Geography at the University of California, Davis, has a distinguished reputation as an expert on the cultural and historical geography of the Navajo and other southwestern native peoples. His numerous publications include co-authorship of the award-winning book Navajo Wildlands and of House of Three Turkeys.
 
Virginia E. Spencer, Indian Housing Specialist with the Housing Assistance Council, has worked as a housing expert in New Mexico and in Washington, D.C. Her master’s thesis, written under Dr. Stephen C. Jett at the University of California, Davis, sparked the cooperative venture that resulted in the writing and publication of Navajo Architecture.