Rob Shapiro has a resonant voice, and his narration style—thoughtful and deliberate—suits this unauthorized biography of futurist Buckminster Fuller. Shapiro performs the sometimes difficult text, full of geometrical concepts and Fullerisms, with careful pacing and apt timing that allow the listener to take in Fuller’s long, packed, and exceptional life. From the same family as Transcendentalist Margaret Fuller, Buckminster was socially connected but never financially secure. The author is out to set the record straight. He questions Fuller’s memory, veracity, and integrity. Yet in the end, the creator of the geodesic dome, the coiner of “Spaceship Earth” and “synergy,” comes through as flawed but immensely energetic, gifted, and visionary. No hagiography here but a compelling listen. A.D.M. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
Inventor of the Future: The Visionary Life of Buckminster Fuller
Narrated by Rob Shapiro
Alec Nevala-LeeUnabridged — 18 hours, 4 minutes
Inventor of the Future: The Visionary Life of Buckminster Fuller
Narrated by Rob Shapiro
Alec Nevala-LeeUnabridged — 18 hours, 4 minutes
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Overview
From Alec Nevala-Lee, the author of the Hugo and Locus Award finalist Astounding, comes a revelatory biography of the visionary designer who defined the rules of startup culture and shaped America's idea of the future.
During his lifetime, Buckminster Fuller was hailed as one of the greatest geniuses of the twentieth century. As the architectural designer and futurist best known for the geodesic dome, he enthralled a vast popular audience, inspired devotion from both the counterculture and the establishment, and was praised as a modern Leonardo da Vinci. To his admirers, he exemplified what one man could accomplish by approaching urgent design problems using a radically unconventional set of strategies, which he based on a mystical conception of the universe's geometry. His views on sustainability, as embodied in the image of Spaceship Earth, convinced him that it was possible to provide for all humanity through the efficient use of planetary resources. From Epcot Center to the molecule named in his honor as the buckyball, Fuller's legacy endures to this day, and his belief in the transformative potential of technology profoundly influenced the founders of Silicon Valley.
Inventor of the Future is the first authoritative biography to cover all aspects of Fuller's career. Drawing on meticulous research, dozens of interviews, and thousands of unpublished documents, Nevala-Lee has produced a riveting portrait that transcends the myth of Fuller as an otherworldly generalist. It reconstructs the true origins of his most famous inventions, including the Dymaxion Car, the Wichita House, and the dome itself; his fraught relationships with his students and collaborators; his interactions with Frank Lloyd Wright, Isamu Noguchi, Clare Boothe Luce, John Cage, Steve Jobs, and many others; and his tumultuous private life, in which his determination to succeed on his own terms came at an immense personal cost. In an era of accelerating change, Fuller's example remains enormously relevant, and his lessons for designers, activists, and innovators are as powerful and essential as ever.
Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.
Editorial Reviews
06/13/2022
Novelist Nevala-Lee (Astounding) offers a cogent assessment of futurist Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983), “a man who had been revered by both the counterculture and the establishment” in this solid biography. Nevala-Lee traces Fuller’s rise from being an uninspiring student at Milton Academy to the visionary who revolutionized—with differing levels of success—the design of things as varied as bathrooms and sports stadiums. Out of a childhood trip to Chicago a “lasting interest in industry” was born, and despite below-average grades, Fuller was admitted to Harvard, where he had a rocky experience and never finished. The death of his daughter in 1922 marked a turning point in his life, Nevala-Lee writes, and led to his “encounter many of his lifelong obsessions for the first time.” The author does a great job exploring the mythology that surrounded Fuller, as well as his creations (such as the architectural geodesic dome) and his anticipating such modern developments as the internet. The many celebrities, artists, politicians, and innovators Fuller crossed paths with make for rich fodder, too (he was friends with Hollywood director John Huston, and Albert Einstein allegedly told him at a party, “Young man, you amaze me”). The result is a fascinating portrait of a larger-than-life figure. Agent: David P. Halpern, Robbins Office. (Aug.)
Revealing...Fuller could come across as a selfless seer, almost a secular saint; in Nevala-Lee’s biography he is all too human...The strength of this carefully researched and fair-minded biography is that the reader comes away with a greater understanding of a deeply complicated individual who overcame obstacles—many of his own making—to achieve a kind of imperfect greatness.” — Witold Rybczynski, New York Times
"Alec Nevala-Lee is a sure-footed guide to a dizzying life. He eschews mythmaking, laying out the way Fuller burnished his own legend by rewriting history and slighting the contributions of his collaborators. Clear-eyed about his subject’s faults, Mr Nevala-Lee nevertheless gives him his due as a dazzlingly original thinker...The portrait the author paints is compelling...[Fuller] comes alive in these pages as a visionary who rose above his imperfections to labour for the benefit of humankind." — The Economist
“Brilliant...Alec Nevala-Lee’s writing is as serene and precise as one of Fuller’s geodesic domes...A genuinely groundbreaking book full of surprises.” — Esquire
“Nevala-Lee is something of an expert in a very specific type: twentieth-century men, working on the fringes of stem careers, who channeled the technological optimism of the years between World War I and the 1970s into careers as media icons…A labor of love…Meticulous and clearly written.” — New Republic
"It requires a Dymaxion biographer to take the full measure of Buckminster Fuller—the huckster-visionary who finally made good on (at least some of) his dizzying schemes and changed the world. In his effervescent Inventor of the Future, Alec Nevala-Lee proves himself Bucky’s match, debunking myths and ferreting out deeper truths at every twist and turn of this remarkable saga of an unlikely rise to global fame and influence. Nevala-Lee is the rare biographer of a 'great man' who successfully links private and public life, showing how Fuller’s incomparable genius was both innate and inspired by the synergy of meetings with a cast of brilliant characters, a Who’s Who of the twentieth century’s modernist intelligentsia. For Fuller, a better future was never beyond imagining, an optimism this fine biography makes contagious." — Megan Marshall, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Margaret Fuller: A New American Life
"Buckminster Fuller was part design guru, part visionary futurist, part bold technocrat, part New England patrician and part insecure striver. Until now we have never had a book about him that portrays the full extent of his complex and contradictory character, and explains how he could be at once a quirky iconoclast and an inspiration to technological empires. Alec Nevala-Lee’s beautifully written Inventor of the Future is the perceptive, nuanced biography of Fuller that we have needed, and it is as engaging to read as Fuller's extraordinary geodesic domes are to look at." — Paul Goldberger, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Building Art: The Life and Work of Frank Gehry
“Various friends and acolytes wrote books about Fuller in his lifetime, but until now there has never been a thoroughgoing biography…Carefully researched…Nevala-Lee compares Fuller to Steve Jobs, a design visionary, and Elon Musk—both ‘outsiders who disrupted established fields’—as well as Jeff Bezos.” — James Gleick, The New York Review of Books
"Ever the optimist, ever the outsider, Fuller never tired of trying to pull humanity toward a better future. Alec Nevala-Lee’s authoritative biography...tells Fuller’s story in greater detail than ever." — Wall Street Journal
"Alec Nevala-Lee’s new biography, Inventor of the Future, fact-checks Fuller’s legend and then corrects the record...He resists the hypnotic whirlpool surrounding Fuller...A bedazzling cobweb of who’s who in 20th-century America." — Pradeep Niroula, Los Angeles Review of Books
“Novelist, biographer, and science-fiction writer Nevala-Lee draws on abundant archival material to fashion a thoroughly researched, comprehensive biography of architect, inventor, and “serial entrepreneur” R. Buckminster Fuller….A perceptive and cleareyed biography of a unique figure.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"This probing biography of Buckminster Fuller distinguishes man from myth while giving the iconic designer and futurist due credit for influencing generations of big thinkers...Nevala-Lee diligently emphasizes Fuller’s contradictions...but he also persuasively demonstrates that, in the end, none of Fuller’s epic shortcomings would matter. Fuller’s most enduring creation was his own ethos, that of the free-thinking futurist whose design solutions would solve the planet’s problems. Such ideas would take deep root, especially in Silicon Valley, even if the math never quite worked out." — Booklist (starred review)
"A clear-eyed portrait of the cult of (tech) personality that reads very 2022." — Chicago Tribune, "Books for Summer 2022"
"Novelist Nevala-Lee (Astounding) offers a cogent assessment of futurist Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983), “a man who had been revered by both the counterculture and the establishment” in this solid biography...a fascinating portrait of a larger-than-life figure." — Publishers Weekly
"This new biography of the multi-hyphenate American icon and futurist promises to dig deep into both his professional and personal life and frames him as the father of startup culture, showing how his ideas infected Silicon Valley and still hold sway today—whether you live in a geodesic dome or not." — Lit Hub, "Most Anticipated Books of 2022, Part Two"
“Nevala-Lee draws a revealing portrait of the Buckminster Fuller behind the legend. It encompasses both Fuller’s passions and his foibles. Placing Fuller where he belongs in the pantheon of America’s inventors, Inventor of the Future is the first complete portrait of both the man and the myth.” — John Markoff, author of Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand
"This is a deceptively artful book of circuitous tensions and great circles (which the author uses as beautiful chapter titles and section headings) where, finally, all the loops and time-bends of Buckminster Fuller's improbable life come close to merging into one." — Paul Hendrickson, author of Plagued by Fire: The Dreams and Furies of Frank Lloyd Wright
"Nevala-Lee brings back to life one of the most influential American minds of the twentieth century—revealing both the brilliance and the flaws that are contributing to the bold and radical technological reimagining of how we think and live." — David Edwards, author of Creating Things That Matter: The Art and Science of Innovations That Last
"Revealing . . . Utterly fascinating . . . An important biography and entertaining read from start to finish." — Analog Science Fiction and Fact
"This exhaustive biography of mastermind architect Buckminster Fuller sheds light on the origins of some of his most notable works. While the book looks back on interviews and unpublished documents from Fuller’s lifetime and career, Fuller himself will always be remembered for looking toward the future." — The Architect's Newspaper
Nevala-Lee draws a revealing portrait of the Buckminster Fuller behind the legend. It encompasses both Fuller’s passions and his foibles. Placing Fuller where he belongs in the pantheon of America’s inventors, Inventor of the Future is the first complete portrait of both the man and the myth.
"This is a deceptively artful book of circuitous tensions and great circles (which the author uses as beautiful chapter titles and section headings) where, finally, all the loops and time-bends of Buckminster Fuller's improbable life come close to merging into one."
"Nevala-Lee brings back to life one of the most influential American minds of the twentieth century—revealing both the brilliance and the flaws that are contributing to the bold and radical technological reimagining of how we think and live."
07/01/2022
Nevala-Lee (Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction) claims that Buckminster Fuller, considered to be a modern-day Leonardo da Vinci and one of the greatest geniuses of the 20th century, has never been the subject of such a comprehensive biography. Described as an unconventional thinker before his time, Fuller was the architectural designer and futurist best known for popularizing the geodesic dome architectural style in the United States. Disney's design team utilized the dome as the central element of its famous EPCOT Center. Fuller believed that technology could lift entire nations out of poverty. Silicon Valley leaders, including Steve Jobs, admired his counter-cultural, philosophical thinking and believed Fuller provided a model of what was possible. Fuller's importance was only partially understood during his lifetime, however, and he was arguably a key prototype for the Ivy-League-dropout start-up founder, as Nevala-Lee argues in this meticulously researched biography, with more than 450 notes and an extensive bibliography. VERDICT This dense biography is best for readers seeking a deep understanding of a countercultural icon of futurist thinking that has impacted many modern tech industry leaders.—Gary Medina
Rob Shapiro has a resonant voice, and his narration style—thoughtful and deliberate—suits this unauthorized biography of futurist Buckminster Fuller. Shapiro performs the sometimes difficult text, full of geometrical concepts and Fullerisms, with careful pacing and apt timing that allow the listener to take in Fuller’s long, packed, and exceptional life. From the same family as Transcendentalist Margaret Fuller, Buckminster was socially connected but never financially secure. The author is out to set the record straight. He questions Fuller’s memory, veracity, and integrity. Yet in the end, the creator of the geodesic dome, the coiner of “Spaceship Earth” and “synergy,” comes through as flawed but immensely energetic, gifted, and visionary. No hagiography here but a compelling listen. A.D.M. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
★ 2022-05-11
A full portrait of the fascinating life of a famed disruptor.
Novelist, biographer, and science-fiction writer Nevala-Lee draws on abundant archival material to fashion a thoroughly researched, comprehensive biography of architect, inventor, and “serial entrepreneur” R. Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983), who famously created the geodesic dome. Fuller, the great-nephew of transcendentalist Margaret Fuller, grew up in Milton, Massachusetts. He entered Harvard in 1913 but did so poorly that he withdrew after a semester. After a stint in the Navy and a job in sales with a meatpacking company, Fuller joined his father-in-law, a designer with an interest in architecture, to invent lightweight building blocks for the construction of efficient, affordable housing. Together, they established the Stockade Building System, with Fuller as chief salesman and promoter—a role he inhabited throughout his long career in many ventures. His interest in housing led him to build his own “scientific housing company,” Fuller Houses, to produce components that could be delivered as a package and assembled quickly on site. Cars and airplanes inspired him to design a blimp-shaped house and car. As Nevala-Lee notes, Fuller’s self-aggrandizement, mythmaking, “expansive claims” and “messianic language” informed many previous portrayals of him as a Renaissance man in the mold of Leonardo da Vinci. While not underestimating the fertility of Fuller’s imagination, Nevala-Lee reveals his subject’s reliance on colleagues and students. Like a virus, he had “a unique talent for using a host to reproduce.” When he taught at various colleges, he recruited students as unpaid labor, taking their discoveries “to the next school on his list, burnishing his image as a genius by assimilating the work of many others.” Hailed as a futurist, among his predictions were online education and remote working. He influenced architects such as Norman Foster and Frank Gehry, and his conviction “that economic forces favored gargantuan service industries,” has been borne out by Amazon.
A perceptive and cleareyed biography of a unique figure.
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940176098181 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins Publishers |
| Publication date: | 08/02/2022 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
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