Some were designed in elaborate styles bearing elegant names--Beaux-Arts, French Renaissance, Art Deco. Others were humbly handcrafted from easily accessible materials--wood, stone, and sod. But whether courtly, colloquial, capricious, or curious, each of the state's architectural configurations has become an aesthetic slice of Kansas.

In Guide to Kansas Architecture, David Sachs and George Ehrlich spotlight hundreds of these surprisingly diverse homes, businesses, schools, churches, courthouses, theaters, bridges, and barns spread throughout all 105 counties. Encompassing the...