The deeply felt tribute to Le Corbusier’s work is enriched by Weber’s engrossing, entertaining portrait of his complex...
Exhaustive biography of one of the most innovative and influential architects of the 20th century.
Cultural historian Weber (The Clarks of Cooperstown, 2007, etc.) had access to reams of revealing correspondence between Le Corbusier (1887–1965) and his mentor, Swiss music critic William Ritter; his wife; his American mistress; and his parents, especially his mother. Drawing on these archives, the author has produced a vivid, nearly day-by-day account of the architect’s peripatetic professional life and his previously undisclosed personal one. Born Charles-Edouard Jeanneret in the Swiss Alps, he attended art school there; excerpts from the letters reveal his early struggles to free himself from a provincial background, his sexual frustrations and his volatile personality. He moved to Paris at age 29, soon adopted a new name and with the artist Amédée Ozenfant began promoting the artistic movement of Purism. A sculptor and painter as well as a visionary architect, Le Corbusier produced dozens of works on art, architecture and city planning. Weber clearly illustrates the development of his theories about the use of architecture to transform the human condition by combining modern industrial materials such as concrete, steel and glass with nature and light to provide ideal environments for all. The author quotes freely from correspondence that shows Le Corbusier to have been opportunistic, proud and authoritarian, willing to reshape facts to suit his vision of himself and holder of a long grudge against America. At the same time, he was generous and imaginative, fiercely attached to his mother, an ardent lover of female beauty. Weber visited most existing Le Corbusier buildings, which he describes here in glowing terms. L’Unité d’Habitation, an apartment complex in Marseille, is “a turning point in the history of how human beings live”; the General Assembly building in Chandigarh, India, “represents an apogee of imagination and courage”; the chapel at Ronchamp, is “a miraculous realm beyond total comprehension.”
The deeply felt tribute to Le Corbusier’s work is enriched by Weber’s engrossing, entertaining portrait of his complex personality.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-375-41043-7
Page Count: 944
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2008
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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