The “shock of the new” is evident everywhere in this revealing, accessible, and luscious memoir.
With gusto, an exuberant architect considers his life and work.
Libeskind (Daniel Libeskind: Inspiration and Process in Architecture, 2015, etc.) describes his book as “esoteric concepts” transformed into a “visual feast.” In a reprinted page from Horace’s Art of Poetry, these lines jump out: “Such is the book, that like a sick man’s dreams, / Varies all shapes, and mixes all extremes.” It’s an apt description of this book, a lavish array of texts, full-page callouts in large, boldface type, pages of various colors, and sumptuous photographs of the author’s buildings, extreme in their curved and winding shapes and sizes, with massive, metallic edges and intersecting diagonal slashes. Born in Poland in 1946 (his parents were Holocaust survivors), Libeskind’s two early obsessions were the accordion and drawing. The family moved to the Bronx in 1959, and the author studied architecture at Cooper Union. He tells us he was a rebel: “I always try to depart from what has come before.” He was in his 50s before his first building was completed, the Felix Nussbaum Haus. Throughout, he discusses lifelong sources of inspiration: W.B. Yeats, The Little Prince, Michelangelo, James Joyce, Emily Dickinson, and music. Architecture, he writes, is “actually similar to a symphony, which, at its conception, is nothing more than code on paper.” Reassembling the pieces of a broken English teapot inspired his Imperial War Museum in Manchester, England. Libeskind invites us to take a visual and textual tour of some of his most important structures, including Milan’s CityLife, Singapore’s Reflections and Corals at Keppel Bay, Dublin’s Grand Canal Theatre, and the highly challenging and complex World Trade Center Master Plan. He also includes some of his city sculptures and furniture products such as chairs, a chess set, and a chandelier. Quoting Le Corbusier, his advice to young architects is simple: “travel” and “read books.”
The “shock of the new” is evident everywhere in this revealing, accessible, and luscious memoir.Pub Date: Nov. 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-451-49735-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Clarkson Potter
Review Posted Online: Sept. 17, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.
A lightweight collection of self-help snippets from the bestselling author.
What makes a quote a quote? Does it have to be quoted by someone other than the original author? Apparently not, if we take Strayed’s collection of truisms as an example. The well-known memoirist (Wild), novelist (Torch), and radio-show host (“Dear Sugar”) pulls lines from her previous pages and delivers them one at a time in this small, gift-sized book. No excerpt exceeds one page in length, and some are only one line long. Strayed doesn’t reference the books she’s drawing from, so the quotes stand without context and are strung together without apparent attention to structure or narrative flow. Thus, we move back and forth from first-person tales from the Pacific Crest Trail to conversational tidbits to meditations on grief. Some are astoundingly simple, such as Strayed’s declaration that “Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard.” Others call on the author’s unique observations—people who regret what they haven’t done, she writes, end up “mingy, addled, shrink-wrapped versions” of themselves—and offer a reward for wading through obvious advice like “Trust your gut.” Other quotes sound familiar—not necessarily because you’ve read Strayed’s other work, but likely due to the influence of other authors on her writing. When she writes about blooming into your own authenticity, for instance, one is immediately reminded of Anaïs Nin: "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Strayed’s true blossoming happens in her longer works; while this collection might brighten someone’s day—and is sure to sell plenty of copies during the holidays—it’s no substitute for the real thing.
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-101-946909
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
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