Descripciones mejoradas de Syndetics:

A finalist for the National Book Critic's Circle Award.



"smoothly written and fair-minded" -- Wall Street Journal



A biography of architect Philip Johnson and how he helped shape modern architecture through bold vision, cultural influence, and iconic design, from Pulitzer Prize winning author Mark Lamster.



When Philip Johnson died in 2005 at the age of 98, he was still one of the most recognizable and influential figures on the American cultural landscape. The first recipient of the Pritzker Prize and MoMA's founding architectural curator, Johnson made his mark as one of America's leading architects with his famous Glass House in New Caanan, CT, and his controversial AT&T Building in NYC, among many others in nearly every city in the country -- but his most natural role was as a consummate power broker and shaper of public opinion.



Johnson introduced European modernism -- the sleek, glass-and-steel architecture that now dominates our cities -- to America, and mentored generations of architects, designers, and artists to follow. He defined the era of "starchitecture" with its flamboyant buildings and celebrity designers who esteemed aesthetics and style above all other concerns. But Johnson was also a man of deep paradoxes: he was a Nazi sympathizer, a designer of synagogues, an enfant terrible into his old age, a populist, and a snob. His clients ranged from the Rockefellers to televangelists to Donald Trump.



Award-winning architectural critic and biographer Mark Lamster's The Man in the Glass House lifts the veil on Johnson's controversial and endlessly contradictory life to tell the story of a charming yet deeply flawed man. A rollercoaster tale of the perils of wealth, privilege, and ambition, this book probes the dynamics of American culture that made him so powerful, and tells the story of the built environment in modern America.

Tabla de contenidos provista por Syndetics

• Prologue(p. xi)
• Chapter 1 The Master's Joy(p. 3)
• Chapter 2 From Saul to Paul(p. 21)
• Chapter 3 A Man of Style(p. 51)
• Chapter 4 Show Time(p. 79)
• Chapter 5 The Maestro(p. 105)
• Chapter 6 The Gold Dust Twins(p. 131)
• Chapter 7 An American Führer(p. 155)
• Chapter 8 Pops(p. 181)
• Chapter 9 A New New Beginning(p. 203)
• Chapter 10 An Apostate at Worship(p. 239)
• Chapter 11 Crutches(p. 261)
• Chapter 12 Cocktails on the Terrace(p. 285)
• Chapter 13 Third City(p. 311)
• Chapter 14 Towers and Power(p. 337)
• Chapter 15 The Head of the Circle(p. 369)
• Chapter 16 Things Fall Apart(p. 399)
• Chapter 17 The Irresistible Allure of the Fantastic(p. 425)
• Epilogue(p. 447)
• Acknowledgments(p. 455)
• Notes(p. 459)
• Index(p. 491)

Reseñas proporcionadas por Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

Architecture critic Lamster (Master of Shadows: The Secret Diplomatic Career of Painter Peter Paul Rubens) outlines the complicated and contradictory life of architect Philip Johnson in this engrossing, exhaustively researched account of a brilliant opportunist who introduced modernism to America. Johnson (1906-2005) came from a well-to-do Cleveland family and graduated from Harvard Graduate School of Design, traveled to Germany in the 1930s (where he was in awe of Adolf Hitler and developed "a continued fascination with the dictator's Nazi party"), and founded MOMA's architectural department before becoming one of the architectural world's most skilled and controversial members. A theoretician as much as practitioner, Johnson continuously pushed boundaries, designing the Glass House in Connecticut in 1949, New York City's Seagram Building in 1958, and the Johnson Building at Boston Public Library in 1972. Lamster employs thoughtful analysis ("Because he was restless and his mind was nimble, he could not resist the narcotic draw of the new, and the opportunities for self-aggrandizement the new presented") to demonstrate Johnson's desire to make his mark. This is an entertaining and in-depth look at one of architecture's most complex and influential characters. Agent: Sarah Burnes, Gernert Co. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

CHOICE Review

This biography of Johnson (1906--2005) provides a detailed history of the man--his education, museum curatorship, political activities, architecture, writings, private life, and flirtation with fascism. Lamster (Univ. of Texas, Arlington, and an architectural critic for the Dallas Morning News) has done a thorough job of examining this major figure in the architectural history of the 20th century, although he gives perhaps slightly more attention to Johnson's role as curator, critic, and proselytizer than to analysis of Johnson's buildings. Lamster drew on a wide variety of sources, clearly indicated in the copious notes at the end of the book, which, however, eschew note numbers for page numbers. A number of photographs, all matte black and whites, are scattered throughout the text--again not quite what one would expect from an architectural monograph. But despite that and despite Lamster's modest extra emphasis on Johnson's early travels in Germany and on the less savory aspects of his life (his youthful interest in Hitler and the Nazis), the book does justice to Johnson's career, contribution, and architecture. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates; professionals; general readers. --Damie Stillman, emeritus, University of Delaware

Booklist Review

*Starred Review* To describe architect Philip Johnson as a confounding figure would be an understatement. As a critic in the 1920s, he helped introduce modernist architecture to the U.S. As an architect, he mastered that style and then abandoned it for postmodernism. He was a failed political agitator, a virulent anti-Semite who dreamed of becoming an American Hitler, and a designer of synagogues who had close Jewish friends. Lamster's mesmerizing, authoritative, and often-astonishing study grapples with Johnson's legacy in all its ambiguity. In Johnson's chameleonlike career his audacious stint as the first architecture curator at the Museum of Modern Art, his transformation into a high-society architect, and his rise as a preeminent designer of skyscrapers Lamster depicts a man by turns enchanting and irritating, sublime and subpar, pioneering and derivative. Contradictions abound to the point of absurdity: the gay Johnson joins Lawrence Dennis, a black Fascist passing for white, in organizing a 1930s pro-Nazi political campaign. What does it mean that this man, of all people, became the leading architectural light of late-twentieth-century America? Johnson's contradictions, Lamster argues, reveal something of the nation's. Readers may come away with both contempt and admiration for the subject, a testament to Lamster's masterful achievement.--Sam Kling Copyright 2018 Booklist

Notas de autor provistas por Syndetics

Mark Lamster is the architecture critic of the Dallas Morning News , a professor in the architecture school at the University of Texas at Arlington, and a 2017 Loeb Fellow of the Harvard Graduate School of Design.