Frank Lloyd Wright: A Twentieth-Century Life

Discover the incredible life and enduring legacy of Frank Lloyd Wright in this captivating Up Close biography series about twentieth-century America.

“Entertaining and educational.”—School Library Journal

Genius, poseur, egomaniac, innovator, sly rascal—in the ninety-three years of his stormy life, Frank Lloyd Wright was all of these. He was a ladies’ man, a clotheshorse, a deadbeat, and, with three months of formal training, the greatest architect of the twentieth century. Wright was an enigma with a colossal vision, an innate ability to think in three dimensions, an instinctive sense of engineering, and a furious disdain for the classical style that dominated American architecture.

Wright changed the way we live. As a one-man force for a uniquely American style, he swept away dark, Victorian clutter and opened up living spaces to air and movement. His professional life was a torrent of invention, from his earliest homes of the late 1800s to the bold spiral of the Guggenheim Museum in 1959. More fascinating and colorful than his own designs, Frank Lloyd Wright was consistently controversial, a towering figure in our culture who deserves his status as an American icon.

This is one of the titles in Up Close, a riveting, all-access biography series that celebrates the leaders, artists, and legends of twentieth-century America—and the impact they had on the world.