Buckminster Fuller - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312288905 ISBN 13: 9780312288907

Publisher: Saint Martin's Griffin,U.S., 2002

Buckminster Fuller, inventor, thinker and architect, was one of the best known Americans of the 20th century. Often compared to Leonardo da Vinci and called "the planet's friendly genius", he was the inventor of the geodesic dome, the man who coined the term "spaceship earth" and an educator without parallel. Yet today, most of his books are out of print. To remedy this situation, his longtime friend and architectural partner Thomas Zung has compiled a Bucky Fuller reader. This anthology consists of one chapter from each of Fuller's 22 books with a new introduction to each chapter written by such notables as Arthur C. Clarke, Steve Forbes, Calvin Tomkins, Dr Martin Meyerson, Sir Harry Kroto, Arthur L. Loeb, Ed Applewhite, and others. Altogether this book provides an overview of a remarkable intellectual career and the best possible introduction to the man and his thought. Bucky Fuller was one of the most original thinkers and builders the world has ever produced, and this book makes his work available to a new generation.

Review:

Great minds most certainly do not all think alike. Case in point: R Buckminster Fuller, who revolutionised Western thinking and design, even though only a tiny fraction of his ideas were ever developed. Outrageously, most of his works are out of print at the turn of the century, so his collaborator and architectural partner Thomas T K Zung organised the publication of Buckminster Fuller: An Anthology for a New Millennium. Collected are 20 selections from Fuller's books, each introduced by notable thinkers and writers such as Steve Forbes and Arthur C Clarke.

Though his distinctive style--part engineering text, part poetry--takes a bit of extra attention to penetrate, the rewards are tremendous. Though now clichéd, his concept of Spaceship Earth ("only eight thousand miles in diameter, which is almost a negligible dimension in the great vastness of space") blew more minds than the Beatles' White Album. Zung's selections are juicy and enticing--few readers will be able to resist a trip to the library after reading morsels of Utopia or Oblivion and Epic Poem on the History of Industrialisation. The introductions range from scholarly to personal and close in on Fuller's work and personality without ever quite reaching them; they are best revealed in his writing and his still-mimicked work.

Those new to this thinker will find the anthology breathtaking, while those in the know will discover much that is new, including his amazing 10-dollar telegram version of the theory of relativity. It's hard to overestimate Fuller's importance to 20th- and 21st-century thought, despite his self-description in his last book: "I am now close to 88 and I am confident that the only thing important about me is that I am an average healthy human." If only he knew. --Rob Lightner

Review:

"Stimulating and provocative . . . Like a Francis Bacon charting the course for future generations to pursue, Fuller anticipates the need for the 'comprehensive designer, ' who would be a 'synthesis of artist, inventor, mechanic, objective economist, and evolutionary strategist.' Such a man, he says, would be an initiator of design, able to anticipate all of man's needs and provide new and advanced standards of living for a steadily increasing percentage of the world's population."--"Chicago Tribune""Zung's anthology traces the development of Fuller's intellectual life and provides an excellent introduction for a new generation to the life and work of this brilliant thinker."--"Publishers Weekly"

• Publisher: Saint Martin's Griffin,U.S.
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0312288905
• ISBN 13: 9780312288907
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 416
• Editor: Zung Thomas T. K.