You Say to Brick, Wendy Lesser

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WINNER OF THE MARFIELD PRIZE AND PEN AMERICA LOS ANGELES''S 2018 LITERARY AWARD IN RESEARCH NONFICTION. FINALIST FOR THE 2018 PEN/BOGRAD WELD PRIZE FOR BIOGRAPHY One of the Washington Post''s 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction in 2017, a New York Times Notable Book of 2017, and one of Kirkus''s Best Nonfiction Books of 2017 "Wendy Lesser''s You Say to Brick is easily the most complete narrative of Kahn''s life and career, magnificently researched and gracefully written." —Inga Saffron, New York Times Book Review Born in Estonia 1901 and brought to America in 1906, the architect Louis Kahn grew up in poverty in Philadelphia. By the time of his mysterious death in 1974, he was widely recognized as one of the greatest architects of his era. Yet this enormous reputation was based on only a handful of masterpieces, all built during the last fifteen years of his life. Wendy Lesser’s You Say to Brick: The Life of Louis Kahn is a major exploration of the architect’s life and work. Kahn, perhaps more than any other twentieth-century American architect, was a “public” architect. Rather than focusing on corporate commissions, he devoted himself to designing research facilities, government centers, museums, libraries, and other structures that would serve the public good. But this warm, captivating person, beloved by students and admired by colleagues, was also a secretive man hiding under a series of masks. Kahn himself, however, is not the only complex subject that comes vividly to life in these pages. His signature achievements—like the Salk Institute in La Jolla, the National Assembly Building of Bangladesh, and the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad—can at first seem as enigmatic and beguiling as the man who designed them. In attempts to describe these structures, we are ...