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BUILDING ART

Name: BUILDING ART
Author: Paul Goldberger
ISBN: 978-0-307-70153-4

THE LIFE AND WORK OF FRANK GEHRY

by Paul Goldberger ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 15, 2015

Richly researched, intelligent, and graceful, but some readers may wonder if Gehry has a dark side.

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An admiring life of the celebrated architect who designed, among other notable structures, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, and Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.

Vanity Fair contributing editor Goldberger, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize (Distinguished Criticism, 1984), has published other works on architecture (Building Up and Tearing Down, 2009, etc.) and has known Gehry for decades. His affection and admiration are patent throughout the book. Although he acknowledges some of Gehry’s personal weaknesses—e.g., he does not like firing people and passes on such tasks to subordinates—the closest he comes to something full-on negative is when he comments that when Gehry’s recent design for an Eisenhower Memorial in Washington, D.C., received some noisy opposition, it was just “one of those moments when Babe Ruth strikes out.” In many ways, Goldberger presents a traditional biography. He begins with a key event (the opening of a New York City apartment tower in 2011; he returns to it some 350 pages later) and then chronicles some family history before following Gehry, born in Canada in 1929 as Frank Owen Goldberg, a name he would change in 1954. The author takes us through Gehry’s schooling, his decision to try architecture, his early struggles, and his eventual ascension to what has been a career to rival that of Frank Lloyd Wright. Goldberger highlights Gehry’s pioneering use of design software, credits his most valuable associates (some of whom he later fired), and comments periodically about his relationships with his children (from two marriages), whom he didn’t see much, although one son joined the firm and has risen to prominence there. The author ends with the heartaches that all long-living human beings must endure—deaths of loved ones and the decline of health, mental acuity, and creative power.

Richly researched, intelligent, and graceful, but some readers may wonder if Gehry has a dark side.

Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-307-70153-4

Page Count: 528

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: June 29, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).

Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)