From an Apollo Magazine article:

Jencks’s book grew out of his PhD thesis, supervised by Reyner Banham at the University of London in the late 1960s, and paved the way for his later, more explicitly polemical The Language of Post-Modern Architecture (1977). In this bestselling book, Jencks set out his stall for a pluralist architecture that rejected what he saw as modernism’s reductive ‘univalent’ approach, swapping it for a symbolically rich and historically engaged ‘multivalent’ postmodernism. For good or bad it became the defining book of its era, an unabashed rejection of mainstream modernism that ushered in a new architectural style.

Modern Movements in Architecture (1973) by Charles Jencks was one of the first books on architecture I read, a birthday present given to me the summer before I started my degree. In some ways, it spoiled things: I thought all architecture books would be that much fun. Modern Movements in Architecture is a complex and sophisticated history, but it wears its learning lightly. It relates architecture to a wider cultural discourse and it is unafraid to be critical, even of some architects, such as Mies van der Rohe, who were previously considered to be above criticism.

To read more: https://www.apollo-magazine.com/remembering-charles-jencks/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=APNE%20%2020191125%20%20AL&utm_content=APNE%20%2020191125%20%20AL+CID_7c3d4bb6631465b2c8eab8a1cebe2725&utm_source=CampaignMonitor_Apollo&utm_term=His%20writing%20was%20always%20alive%20to%20the%20deep%20pleasures%20of%20great%20buildings