PILOT FOR SPACESHIP EARTH: R. Buckminster Fuller, Architect, Inventor, and Poet

A gushing, ineptly constructed biography, in approach and incident (Einstein's ""Young man, you amaze me"") reminiscent of Halch's adult Buckminster Fuller (1974). Of the many tacks that might be taken toward this genius/prophet/Renaissance crackpot/whatever, Lord takes none--unless you consider gee-whiz adulation an organizing viewpoint in itself. And though a sense of the whole is central to Fuller's thought, Lord serves him up in chronologically ordered bits and pieces. Her coverage of his personal and business life is superficial and clichÉd (off to Harvard ""with a sense of adventure and high hopes,"" he soon found classes ""sheer drudgery""), and into this she drops blurbs on his books and ideas with no thought of transition or development. Misleading inaccuracies abound, and when it comes to Fuller's geometry of the tetrahedon Lord doesn't seem to understand math and physics well enough to grasp the nature of his innovation, let alone explain it to youngsters. (That she doesn't understand Fuller is more excusable.) Thus, she overstates his contribution, and, at the same time, fails to do him justice.