Upcoming Fuller Biography – Inventor of the Future, by Alec Nevala-Lee
Announcing a new Buckminster Fuller biography available August 2nd, 2022! From author Alec Nevala-Lee (author of Astounding) comes a revelatory biography of the visionary designer who defined the rules of start-up culture and shaped America’s idea of the future, Buckminster Fuller.
As a member of the Buckminster Fuller Institute, or on you are on the BFI email list, you will receive invitations to online events with Alec Nevala-Lee.
Visit this link for a drawing hosted by the publisher. Enter for a chance to win a free Dymaxion one-year membership, and a copy of Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1978) signed by Fuller.
During Buckminster Fuller’s lifetime, he was hailed as one of the greatest geniuses of the twentieth century. As the architectural designer, inventor, and futurist best known for the geodesic dome, he enthralled a vast popular audience, inspired devotion from both the counterculture and the general public, and was praised as a modern Leonardo da Vinci.
Fuller was renowned for his avowed optimism that technology could “make the world work” for everyone by lifting entire nations out of poverty. His message centered on the figure of a generalist known as the comprehensive designer, “an emerging synthesis of artist, inventor, mechanic, objective economist, and evolutionary strategist,” capable of grasping whole systems.
Inventor of the Future, pg. 3
Using a design strategy based on geometry, he became convinced that it was possible to provide for all humanity through the efficient use of planetary resources, which he embodied in the image of Spaceship Earth. From Epcot Center to the molecule named in his honor as the buckyball (C60), Fuller’s legacy endures to this day, and his belief in the transformative potential of technology profoundly influenced the founders of Silicon Valley.
“It requires a Dymaxion biographer to take the full measure of Buckminster Fuller….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….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
Inventor of the Future is the first authoritative biography to cover all aspects of Fuller’s career, which extended from World War I through the digital revolution. Drawing upon thousands of unpublished documents and dozens of interviews, it reconstructs the true origins of his most famous inventions, including the Dymaxion Car and the Wichita House. His fraught relationships with his students and collaborators are revealed, along with his interactions with many notable figures such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Isamu Noguchi, Clare Boothe Luce, John Cage, Steve Jobs, and others. Finally, the biography exposes Fuller’s 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 story remains enormously relevant, and his lessons for designers, activists, and innovators are as powerful and essential as ever.
Find your local bookstore on Indiebound.org and pre-order Inventor of the Future: The Visionary Life of Buckminster Fuller.
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