Isn’t it a little early to read, let alone to write, a history of the development of ground zero? Even in terms of what has already happened, Paul Goldberger’s new book, “Up From Zero” (Random House, 288 pages, $24.95), can be only provisional at

best, since we are surely still too mired in events to have achieved any historical perspective. And lest we forget, not a single thing has yet been built.

Most of Mr. Goldberger’s new book is a discussion of the various competitions for the site’s master plan and the memorial. As for behind-the-scenes maneuverings that brought about our present state of affairs, itself provisional, he rarely provides insight or information beyond what was long ago known and discussed in newspapers and periodicals around the world.

For the most part, the book lays out in clear and compendious form the events of the past two years, thus refreshing our memories where they have started to go a little fuzzy. Only one chapter (the second) stands out: “Rockefeller’s Vision: The Original World Trade Center.” Here Mr. Goldberger gives a very useful assessment of the complex circumstances that inspired the planning of the Twin Towers, starting as far back as the 1940s.

Mr. Goldberger is the nation’s default writer on architecture. He is the one who is always called on, and who always comes, when a preface is needed for a coffee-table book. The reason for this is that he is – or he was – from the New York Times, “so you know he’s good.” One thing he isn’t, however, is a great stylist. His writing is clear enough, free of jargon, and given only occasionally to grammatical slips.

In general, the book’s tone of bureaucratic adequacy is quite good enough for his present subject, a recital of the bureaucratic machinations that have brought us where we are today. Only occasionally – as though in half-hearted compliance with the promptings of his editor – does he try to make a “story” out of his discussion. At such moments, his prose can descend very quickly into the most chinless New York Times-ese, as when he writes of “Monica Iken, a statuesque young blond widow.”

Like the newspaper that employed him for two decades – before he moved on to his present position at the New Yorker – Mr. Goldberger wishes at least to appear to hover Brahminically above the fray. At the same time, he makes subtly catty comments about almost everyone, such that David Childs and Norman Foster, Richard Meier, and Larry Silverstein, all come off as thoroughgoing egotists.

It is strange to say this about a book about the aftermath of September 11, but “Up From Zero’s” great lack is its sense of humor. Surely the attack three years ago must never be viewed with anything other than the most solemn outrage. But the bloviating pomposity of Leon Wieseltier’s debate with Mr. Libeskind, or Mr. Libeskind’s misalliance with David Childs, goes to the very heart of that human comedy that inspired some of the best pages of Dickens and Balzac.

Unfortunately, the Timesian fetish for “fairness” is something Mr. Goldberger feels compelled to uphold, and so he will never allow himself to mine this rich territory, even if he could. He is often cynical and occasionally even snide, but never funny.

No less than twice does he say of Daniel Libeskind that he “usually dresses all in black, sometimes with the accent of a red scarf, and he wears heavy, squarish, black rimmed eyeglasses and black cowboy boots.” Just imagine what Robert Hughes could have done with that opportunity! But Mr. Goldberger’s personality was formed at the Times and accordingly partakes of the slightly dithering politeness of that institution.

Ironically, one of the rare instances is which Mr. Goldberger expresses his true feelings is in the case of Herbert Muschamp, his chosen successor at the Times. “It was hard to know whether Muschamp was so blinded by his passion that he failed to understand that he had reversed himself,” he writes of Mr. Muschamp’s decision to remove his initial endorsement of Mr. Libeskind’s and support Rafael Vinoly’s plan, “or whether he believed that denouncing Libeskind would in some way help Vinoly’s cause. Either way, he seemed to have all but put aside his role as a critic who could responsibly evaluate the entire process.” Such bitchery, though accurate, is not quite worth the price of the book.

Mr. Muschamp, of course, has now moved (and not a moment too soon) to the style pages of the Times. Though he may have been an intellectual spastic whose critical compass seems to have been nothing more than a coin-toss and a divining rod, at least he had the courage of his convictions, such as they were. And he had something resembling a coherent point of view.

In this he recalled an older generation of Times critics like Hilton Kramer, Harold Schoenberg, and Bosley Crowther, who understood that they were actually being paid to have opinions. Opinions may be wrong or right, but if critics are secretly ashamed of their opinionative status, then they are nothing at all.

I mention this about the Times because Mr. Goldberger seems to have drunk the Kool-Aid of mid-cult in his implicit assumption that the only “important” architectural writing in New York (or the nation) is in the New York Times. He, if anyone, should know better.