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Inventor of the Future: The Visionary Life of Buckminster Fuller
One ofEsquire's 50 Best Biographies of All Time *One of The Economist's Best Books of 2022 * ANew York TimesBook Review Editors' Choice *Nominated for The Next Big Idea Club *TheWeekMagazine Book of the Week
From Alec Nevala-Lee, the author of the Hugo and Locus Award finalist Astounding, comes a revelatory biography of the visionary designer who defined the rules of startup culture and shaped America’s idea of the future.
During his lifetime, Buckminster Fuller was hailed as one of the greatest geniuses of the twentieth century. As the architectural designer and futurist best known for the geodesic dome, he enthralled a vast popular audience, inspired devotion from both the counterculture and the establishment, and was praised as a modern Leonardo da Vinci. To his admirers, he exemplified what one man could accomplish by approaching urgent design problems using a radically unconventional set of strategies, which he based on a mystical conception of the universe’s geometry. His views on sustainability, as embodied in the image of Spaceship Earth, convinced him that it was possible to provide for all humanity through the efficient use of planetary resources. From Epcot Center to the molecule named in his honor as the buckyball, Fuller’s legacy endures to this day, and his belief in the transformative potential of technology profoundly influenced the founders of Silicon Valley.
Inventor of the Future is the first authoritative biography to cover all aspects of Fuller’s career. Drawing on meticulous research, dozens of interviews, and thousands of unpublished documents, Nevala-Lee has produced a riveting portrait that transcends the myth of Fuller as an otherworldly generalist. It reconstructs the true origins of his most famous inventions, including the Dymaxion Car, the Wichita House, and the dome itself; his fraught relationships with his students and collaborators; his interactions with Frank Lloyd Wright, Isamu Noguchi, Clare Boothe Luce, John Cage, Steve Jobs, and many others; and his 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 example remains enormously relevant, and his lessons for designers, activists, and innovators are as powerful and essential as ever.
From Alec Nevala-Lee, the author of the Hugo and Locus Award finalist Astounding, comes a revelatory biography of the visionary designer who defined the rules of startup culture and shaped America’s idea of the future.
During his lifetime, Buckminster Fuller was hailed as one of the greatest geniuses of the twentieth century. As the architectural designer and futurist best known for the geodesic dome, he enthralled a vast popular audience, inspired devotion from both the counterculture and the establishment, and was praised as a modern Leonardo da Vinci. To his admirers, he exemplified what one man could accomplish by approaching urgent design problems using a radically unconventional set of strategies, which he based on a mystical conception of the universe’s geometry. His views on sustainability, as embodied in the image of Spaceship Earth, convinced him that it was possible to provide for all humanity through the efficient use of planetary resources. From Epcot Center to the molecule named in his honor as the buckyball, Fuller’s legacy endures to this day, and his belief in the transformative potential of technology profoundly influenced the founders of Silicon Valley.
Inventor of the Future is the first authoritative biography to cover all aspects of Fuller’s career. Drawing on meticulous research, dozens of interviews, and thousands of unpublished documents, Nevala-Lee has produced a riveting portrait that transcends the myth of Fuller as an otherworldly generalist. It reconstructs the true origins of his most famous inventions, including the Dymaxion Car, the Wichita House, and the dome itself; his fraught relationships with his students and collaborators; his interactions with Frank Lloyd Wright, Isamu Noguchi, Clare Boothe Luce, John Cage, Steve Jobs, and many others; and his 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 example remains enormously relevant, and his lessons for designers, activists, and innovators are as powerful and essential as ever.
669 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 2, 2022
106 people are currently reading
2732 people want to read
About the author
Alec Nevala-Lee
33books117followersI was born in Castro Valley, California and graduated from Harvard College with a bachelor's degree in classics. My book Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction (Dey Street Books / HarperCollins) was a Hugo and Locus Awards finalist and named one of the best books of the year by The Economist. I'm also the author of the novels The Icon Thief, City of Exiles, and Eternal Empire, all published by Penguin; my short stories have appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Lightspeed Magazine, and The Year's Best Science Fiction; and I've written for such publications as the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Slate, The Daily Beast, Salon, Longreads, The Rumpus, and the San Francisco Bay Guardian. My latest book is Inventor of the Future: The Visionary Life of Buckminster Fuller, which was released by Dey Street Books / HarperCollins on August 2, 2022. I live with my wife and daughter in Oak Park, Illinois.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 44 reviews
January 25, 2023
My reaction to this book is going to be conditioned by the fact that Fuller was never a hero of mine. Sure, I probably noticed the Dymaxion Car by the time I was 12 (1970), and became aware of the man's architectural achievements by the time I was in high school (the mid-1970s). But, by the time I was in my twenties, and old enough and educated enough to have some engagement with the Fuller's writings, my hot take was that I was looking at a lot of double-talk. This is not to mention that I tended to lump Fuller with the rest of the architects who were being criticized for the failures of the "International" Style (see the writings of Peter Blake).
Fast-forward forty or so years, and we have this new life of Fuller, by an ostensible admirer, and Nevala-Lee finds much to be dubious about. Too much hard drinking, too many dubious sexual adventures, too much exploitation of other folks' intellectual property, and too much personal myth making. My overall reaction; so what? This all seems par for the course for a self-invented American man of affairs of the 20th century: "There is no such thing as an original sin." Still, there is the critique that Fuller's personal style might be one of the man's most notable lingering influences, and he basically created the template of entrepreneur as public philosopher, as exemplified by the Silicon Valley Set. However, that Nevala-Lee can trace Fuller's continued influences in the worlds of architecture, the physical sciences, and applied humanities is what impresses me most; this is considering that Fuller's real original goal was to become the Henry Ford of private housing, not the guru of geodesic domes. Keeping in mind that this is a rather dry read, there is much food for thought here.
Fast-forward forty or so years, and we have this new life of Fuller, by an ostensible admirer, and Nevala-Lee finds much to be dubious about. Too much hard drinking, too many dubious sexual adventures, too much exploitation of other folks' intellectual property, and too much personal myth making. My overall reaction; so what? This all seems par for the course for a self-invented American man of affairs of the 20th century: "There is no such thing as an original sin." Still, there is the critique that Fuller's personal style might be one of the man's most notable lingering influences, and he basically created the template of entrepreneur as public philosopher, as exemplified by the Silicon Valley Set. However, that Nevala-Lee can trace Fuller's continued influences in the worlds of architecture, the physical sciences, and applied humanities is what impresses me most; this is considering that Fuller's real original goal was to become the Henry Ford of private housing, not the guru of geodesic domes. Keeping in mind that this is a rather dry read, there is much food for thought here.
July 21, 2022
I won this book in a giveaway. I will usually read just about any bios or autobios about interesting people, even if Ive never heard of them, which happened to be true in this case. I should start by saying the book is actually 477 pages long instead of the 672 it says. The extra pages are acknowledgements, notes, bibliography, and index. That being said, this book was mostly way over my head. Im sure "bucky" was a very smart man and a revolutionary of his time, but with all the geometry and philosophical talk, I just couldnt understand his level of thinking. If you know who this guy is and are a fan of his work, Im sure you would love this book. Its very informative and Im sure educational, even if I didnt understand much from it. It starts with his birth, and ends with beyond his death, and all the patents and inventions and happenings inbetween, as well as info on his personal life and friends. Boy did he know a lot of people! Famous people and influential people as well. There were just times to me the book seemed boring and I found my mind wandering off. Am I glad I won it and read it? Yes. Will I read it again? No.
August 14, 2022
I wonder if Alec Nevala-Lee will get a reputation as a visionary killer. After his book Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Gold Age of Science Fiction came out, John W. Campbell’s name was removed from the award created to honor him, and the reputations of Asimov, Heinlein, Hubbard, and the science fiction Golden Age declined. As I read the first part of Inventor of the Future: The Visionary Life of Buckminster Fuller Nevala-Lee made me strongly dislike Buckminster Fuller by carefully chronicling Fuller’s personal faults. But by the end of the book, I was willing to overlook them. Bucky never redeems himself, but Nevala-Lee’s excellent biography brings everything into perspective. It brings closure to some of my hippie and New Age fantasies.
The rest of my review is on my blog:
The rest of my review is on my blog:
December 26, 2022
I was disappointed by the quality of this book. Most chapters of the book unroll as a a series of explanations of the many things Fuller claimed to have done but didn't. This is certainly a fair criticism of the man who seems to regularly steal ideas and fail to give proper credit. At the same time, the book only alludes to the lasting impact Fuller's ideas and teachings have had on so many people, without really giving any serious analysis to the ideas themselves. Most of the book reads as a travel itinerary where the author rambles about Fuller went here and met her, then there and met him, ad nauseam.
I was left with a poor understand the Fuller's worldview and ideas. I wish the author had spent considerably more time exploring the actual ideas of the man he's writing about instead of compiling a list of people he met and places he'd been. The epilogue tops it out with a laughable attack on Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos that seems to do nothing but show the author's skepticism of capatilism and technological advancement.
Overall I certainly wish I had spent my time reading something else.
I was left with a poor understand the Fuller's worldview and ideas. I wish the author had spent considerably more time exploring the actual ideas of the man he's writing about instead of compiling a list of people he met and places he'd been. The epilogue tops it out with a laughable attack on Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos that seems to do nothing but show the author's skepticism of capatilism and technological advancement.
Overall I certainly wish I had spent my time reading something else.
August 23, 2022
Nevala-Lee's biography of Buckminster Fuller is one of those books that seems more interesting than it actually is. A large tome at 672 pages I put the book down after a couple of chapters. Sadly, while the book is filled with lots of biographical information about Fuller the writing was akin to listening to someone drone a speech in a monotonous tone, that puts you to sleep. Maybe others will have more luck than me.
October 30, 2022
Nevala-Lee has penned the definitive biography of Buckminster Fuller. The success of this book depends upon how much the reader wants to know about Fuller. Although it was obviously well-researched, and was well-written, I discovered that I didn't care about reading that many pages about Fuller!
February 8, 2023
UGH! So much to say. Perhaps a proper review later�. But for now�.
The old adage “You should never meet your heroes� crept into my mind, as I read this excellent, painstakingly detailed biography of one of my heroes. Indeed, I’ve idolized Buckminster Fuller my entire adult life, and I’ve read a number of books about his work. Some of my own work and interests have been directly inspired by things he produced or proposed throughout his career. (Things I’ve come to learn, we’re not always his ideas� more on that later.)
Yet nothing I’ve read about R. Buckminster Fuller, until THIS book, has really told me much about the MAN. The person� the human being he was, apart from his work and ideas.
I am sad to say that I am very disappointed in this old “hero� of mine� this human being whom I finally “met� in this book. For all of his tremendous achievements during his firecracker career, this accounting of his life left me sad and wondering why I idolized him for so long, without knowing the HUMAN that he was.
Quick book summary, in a few short words�. Bucky Fuller was a GENIUS. He was also a LIAR� a FABULIST� and certainly a THIEF of intellectual property. He was a serial ADULTERER, who abandoned his family often� as easily as dropping a coin on the sidewalk. He was, in the very textbook definition of the word, a NARCISSIST. Power hungry, a control freak, a BULLSHITTER, and famously thin skinned. Oh, and a GENIUS.
I could go on, but I’m still in shock about what I’ve learned about this hero of mine.
The old adage “You should never meet your heroes� crept into my mind, as I read this excellent, painstakingly detailed biography of one of my heroes. Indeed, I’ve idolized Buckminster Fuller my entire adult life, and I’ve read a number of books about his work. Some of my own work and interests have been directly inspired by things he produced or proposed throughout his career. (Things I’ve come to learn, we’re not always his ideas� more on that later.)
Yet nothing I’ve read about R. Buckminster Fuller, until THIS book, has really told me much about the MAN. The person� the human being he was, apart from his work and ideas.
I am sad to say that I am very disappointed in this old “hero� of mine� this human being whom I finally “met� in this book. For all of his tremendous achievements during his firecracker career, this accounting of his life left me sad and wondering why I idolized him for so long, without knowing the HUMAN that he was.
Quick book summary, in a few short words�. Bucky Fuller was a GENIUS. He was also a LIAR� a FABULIST� and certainly a THIEF of intellectual property. He was a serial ADULTERER, who abandoned his family often� as easily as dropping a coin on the sidewalk. He was, in the very textbook definition of the word, a NARCISSIST. Power hungry, a control freak, a BULLSHITTER, and famously thin skinned. Oh, and a GENIUS.
I could go on, but I’m still in shock about what I’ve learned about this hero of mine.
November 17, 2022
Take it slowly
It took a while to read this. Not because of poor writing, but because Bucky Fuller comes off like a real jerk for much of it. I think l'd like to read some more of Fuller's writing or speeches. This feels like a definitive bio with interesting commentary on Fuller's impact.
It took a while to read this. Not because of poor writing, but because Bucky Fuller comes off like a real jerk for much of it. I think l'd like to read some more of Fuller's writing or speeches. This feels like a definitive bio with interesting commentary on Fuller's impact.
January 17, 2023
I wish this book explored non-traditional structures in the way that Bucky did. It was a bit tedious to read a chronological play-by-play and I came away knowing less about his ideas than I wish I did. However, I really appreciated the candor with with the author examined Fuller's life because the honesty allowed for a comprehensive understanding of how he achieved what he did.
February 15, 2023
I grew up uncritically swallowing the mystique of Buckminster Fuller. My father built a summer house, which I loved above all other places, on Nantucket, in the form of 3 geodesic domes connected by an octagonal porch, which ultimately became a closed-in great room. It was designed by one of Fuller's students. For a child, it was the most intriguing and delightful house imaginable, as good as a castle. That's where my hero-worship of Fuller began.
Reading this estimable and frank biography was an eye-opener. I had no idea how fraught Fuller's life was, and my childhood admiration of him was based solely on a dim idea that he had invented the geodesic dome. Nowadays, in this blunt era, we should not be surprised to learn of our (former) heroes that they have feet of clay. But it was a bit of a shock nonetheless to learn what a difficult man Fuller was, and how imperfect. Those nearest him paid the highest price. Sadly, I've seen that tale repeated in many lives of great people. Still, he was an original thinker and someone who pushed architecture and design forward in a number of ways. We owe the concept of "Spaceship Earth" to him, and the idea of our planet as a vessel for all of us that needs our care and attention is only becoming more relevant every day.
Reading this estimable and frank biography was an eye-opener. I had no idea how fraught Fuller's life was, and my childhood admiration of him was based solely on a dim idea that he had invented the geodesic dome. Nowadays, in this blunt era, we should not be surprised to learn of our (former) heroes that they have feet of clay. But it was a bit of a shock nonetheless to learn what a difficult man Fuller was, and how imperfect. Those nearest him paid the highest price. Sadly, I've seen that tale repeated in many lives of great people. Still, he was an original thinker and someone who pushed architecture and design forward in a number of ways. We owe the concept of "Spaceship Earth" to him, and the idea of our planet as a vessel for all of us that needs our care and attention is only becoming more relevant every day.
August 25, 2023
Bucky was a systems theorist, writer, designer, inventor, philosopher, and futurist...and he got much of it right (the internet, remote learning, the process of tech start ups, the commodification of information)! And then there was the geodesic dome, built upon a sacred geometry of nature that would eventually shed light on structural elements in bacteriology, virology, and genetics (archi-science?). His impact on modern society and culture is broad and deep...so much so that he has been largely forgotten, sublimated by the process of ephemeralization that he espoused.
Bucky was also a scoundrel, plagarizer, and a curmudgeon. This biography is clear and comprehensive, quite an accomplishment given Bucky's frenetic, nonlinear, and at times seemingly contradictory life journey. This is an invaluable read for those curious about how we got to where we are today (spaceship earth), synergetics, tensegrity, and buckyballs!
Bucky was also a scoundrel, plagarizer, and a curmudgeon. This biography is clear and comprehensive, quite an accomplishment given Bucky's frenetic, nonlinear, and at times seemingly contradictory life journey. This is an invaluable read for those curious about how we got to where we are today (spaceship earth), synergetics, tensegrity, and buckyballs!
dnf
May 20, 2023Halfway through, and I still wasn’t convinced that there was anything lasting in here. Fuller is a marginal historical figure I think, and certainly an outsized personality made up for his lesser qualities.
It’s clearly well-researched, but it turns out there isn’t a whole lot I want to know about the guy.
It’s clearly well-researched, but it turns out there isn’t a whole lot I want to know about the guy.
June 19, 2023
The first (or so the author claims in the foreward) serious biography of Buckminster Fuller. Well researched, but somewhat crammed with facts at the expense of clarifying narrative.
November 8, 2023
נדיר להיתקל בדמות כל כך אנטיפתית בביוגרפיה ))
March 30, 2023
I was on a date once and asked who her favourite thinker was. "Buckminster Fuller" she said. Struck dumb, I pedalled in the air for a second, then managed: "Ah cool. What about favourite like social thinker?" "Also Buckminster Fuller". In the years since 2010 I've always assumed she was an inexplicable anomaly, but it turns out that she would have fit right in during the 1970s, when the great fraud had hundreds of young disciples whose ideas and labour he stole. A lot like Steve Jobs and L Ron Hubbard, except a failure.
Previously I just found him amusing (in the exact way that is amusing) but after reading this I think I hate him. Incessantly dishonest and thieving. So dishonest that some people actually died as a result. Nevala-Lee lists hundreds of Fuller's lies. I've just found one more: he told the New Yorker that he was a "Distinguished Scientist" at the United States Institute of Behavioral Research; actually he was a mere "unpaid, intermittent consultant".
He couldn't have pulled off his con, let alone done so for 60 years, without the press lapping up his shit and promoting him all the time. The New Yorker:
A sloppy mystic, masquerading as Edison and Einstein and Gaudi combined. He seems to have stolen most of his ideas (from Le Corbusier, James Hewlett, Sterling Burgess, Isamu Noguchi, Kenneth Snelson, Shoji Sadao, and many others), or rather he gave them vague ideas and then claimed credit for the actual conceptualisation, design, and execution.
One exception, which seems is , a great prediction and one reason I am extremely hopeful about our environmental and economic future. Despite his total lack of redeeming qualities or output, he was an icon for progress, inspiring some people who actually did things. It seems we were missing a world-famous prophet of progress and radical experiment between 1980 and 2010?, until Musk took up the mandate.
You also have to admire the willingness to endure constant travel, work, and relative poverty for the cause, even if that cause was nonsense / self-aggrandizement and he leeched off his family and students to do it.
His total lifetime output:
* 150 bad Stockade houses
* 3 silly lethal cars (not 3 models: 3 instances)
* a handful of housing domes
* 28
* 28 uneven books
* thousands of lectures
* the word "synergy"
* Astonishingly extensive life logging, "140,000 pieces of paper, as well as 64,000 feet of film, 1,500 hours of audio tape, and 300 hours of video recordings"
* enough hot air to lift thousands of hearts
(Of the beautiful : "In fact, he had minimal input on many of the structures with which he was associated, including the Montreal Expo Dome, which was seen as his masterpiece".)
Nevala-Lee is perhaps the first person to write him clearly - but even then he is not sceptical enough, he lets some rot through. A visionary, in the pejorative sense. A deferred inventor, an "inventor" in a future which never arrived, which could not arrive because its author was too incompetent and deluded.
he organized students into divisions inspired by the aircraft industry, like a simulation of a company... a massively distributed virtual corporation that ran on the platform of the university system, in which he embedded himself like a virus...
The dome was going viral, and, like many social epidemics, including dianetics, it had spread through an existing network by word of mouth. Fuller was somewhat like a virus himself, with a unique talent for using a host to reproduce, and he carried the discoveries of each group of students to the next school on his list, burnishing his image as a genius by assimilating the work of many others. When credited to him alone, it made him seem staggeringly versatile...
Fuller’s writings and talks overflowed with misinformation and outright falsehoods, which he methodically built into the reality distortion field that allowed him to achieve so much in a single lifetime...
Albert Einstein, whose work he saw as confirming his own conclusions...
[Schwartz] became the first in a series of women outside his marriage to provide the creative support that he needed at each stage... Bare skin showed between the breastplates and the short skirt [he had designed for her]...
At MIT, Fuller asked students to check his math using trigonometric [tables] that went to fifteen decimal places, and when they refused to come out right, he interpreted it as “a message from God� that the tables themselves were wrong...
... at high speeds, its tail came off the road, leading to a dangerous lack of control... Decades later, he still insisted, “She was the most stable car in history�
Fuller had seen the universe as an omnitriangulated system of energy transactions...
He had yet to regain the trust of his mother, who had moved into a small farmhouse to pay his debts...
To maximize his freedom on his own terms, he had to control others, and in the absence of the usual incentives, he kept them in line with persuasion, charm, or anger, which repeatedly drove away collaborators. A cult of personality has always existed in architecture, but Fuller took it to extremes, since he lacked both real power and obvious monuments. He was a superb choreographer of other people’s lives, and as the nodes of his network grew further apart, it took on a familiar pattern. The biographer Alden Hatch thought that Fuller was “above all a mystic,� and although this reflected an authentic element of his character, it was also a tool to motivate others at a distance. Mystics, like start-up founders, tend to converge on similar strategies, and Fuller’s mysticism assumed a form that was appropriate for America in the age of the machine.
Previously I just found him amusing (in the exact way that is amusing) but after reading this I think I hate him. Incessantly dishonest and thieving. So dishonest that some people actually died as a result. Nevala-Lee lists hundreds of Fuller's lies. I've just found one more: he told the New Yorker that he was a "Distinguished Scientist" at the United States Institute of Behavioral Research; actually he was a mere "unpaid, intermittent consultant".
Fuller characterized it decades afterward as nothing short of a mystical epiphany: “I found myself with my feet not touching the pavement; I found myself in a sort of sparkling kind of sphere.� It was the dramatic appearance of a geometric shape that would dominate his life, and as he felt it surround him, a voice spoke with all the force of divine authority: “From now on, you need never await temporal attestation to your thought. You think the truth...
He couldn't have pulled off his con, let alone done so for 60 years, without the press lapping up his shit and promoting him all the time. The New Yorker:
it is no longer possible to question the practical application of these same principles in such eminently satisfactory structures as the geodesic dome, which has been recognized as the strongest, lightest, and most efficient means of enclosing space yet devised by man
A sloppy mystic, masquerading as Edison and Einstein and Gaudi combined. He seems to have stolen most of his ideas (from Le Corbusier, James Hewlett, Sterling Burgess, Isamu Noguchi, Kenneth Snelson, Shoji Sadao, and many others), or rather he gave them vague ideas and then claimed credit for the actual conceptualisation, design, and execution.
One exception, which seems is , a great prediction and one reason I am extremely hopeful about our environmental and economic future. Despite his total lack of redeeming qualities or output, he was an icon for progress, inspiring some people who actually did things. It seems we were missing a world-famous prophet of progress and radical experiment between 1980 and 2010?, until Musk took up the mandate.
You also have to admire the willingness to endure constant travel, work, and relative poverty for the cause, even if that cause was nonsense / self-aggrandizement and he leeched off his family and students to do it.
Fuller and Isamu Noguchi, who was back in town, slept on air mattresses and survived on doughnuts and coffee
His total lifetime output:
* 150 bad Stockade houses
* 3 silly lethal cars (not 3 models: 3 instances)
* a handful of housing domes
* 28
* 28 uneven books
* thousands of lectures
* the word "synergy"
* Astonishingly extensive life logging, "140,000 pieces of paper, as well as 64,000 feet of film, 1,500 hours of audio tape, and 300 hours of video recordings"
* enough hot air to lift thousands of hearts
(Of the beautiful : "In fact, he had minimal input on many of the structures with which he was associated, including the Montreal Expo Dome, which was seen as his masterpiece".)
Nevala-Lee is perhaps the first person to write him clearly - but even then he is not sceptical enough, he lets some rot through. A visionary, in the pejorative sense. A deferred inventor, an "inventor" in a future which never arrived, which could not arrive because its author was too incompetent and deluded.
February 20, 2023
Must read for anyone who worships Bucky Fuller. A well written detailed account of a man who accomplished little except stealing others ideas, inflating his own ego, bootlicking patrons regardless of their human rights abuses, stalking teenage girls, predatory behavior, cruelty, partnering with literal cult leaders, and consistent exaggeration, lying, falsehoods. He was never an architect, mathematician, successful entrepreneur, or anything else. But he knew how to create a persona and that’s what people loved.
March 16, 2023
It's a long and dry read. I felt the author's tone is condescending throughout the book. The parts the Fuller did well should have been highlighted better. The epilogue is well written.
September 27, 2023
Here’s the thing about liars: every time they contradict themselves, embellish a story, or add an extra zero to the end of a number, they entrench themselves further into an antagonistic relationship with future biographers. Buckminster Fuller doesn’t always come off especially well in Alec Nevala-Lee’s biography, but I don’t think that’s Nevala-Lee’s intention. And I certainly don’t think Nevala-Lee set out to discredit Fuller’s accomplishments. In my view, the main reason this book sometimes reads like a confrontation is that Fuller was a notorious fabulist, and writing an honest biography of him requires the author to be skeptical of everything he ever said. Nearly every page of Nevala-Lee’s book contains a statement in the form “Fuller said X, but actually Y.� This becomes less true towards the end of the book, detailing the part of Fuller’s life when he had less to prove. But there’s only so many pages of spin mitigation you can read before you start to feel like the book’s subject is significantly flawed.
There’s no malice in correcting a falsehood: Nevala-Lee is just doing his job. In fact, I suspect he took on this project with a certain amount of admiration for Fuller. (He states outright in the acknowledgements that he’s been fascinated by Fuller since college.) If you’re a Fuller fan who’s reluctant to read this because you suspect it may be a hatchet job, don’t worry. Nevala-Lee treats Fuller with respect, and never attempts to undermine his influence. But for all Fuller’s virtues, he wasn’t particularly honest. In the context of a truthful biography, that’s a more glaring character flaw than many others might be.
There’s no malice in correcting a falsehood: Nevala-Lee is just doing his job. In fact, I suspect he took on this project with a certain amount of admiration for Fuller. (He states outright in the acknowledgements that he’s been fascinated by Fuller since college.) If you’re a Fuller fan who’s reluctant to read this because you suspect it may be a hatchet job, don’t worry. Nevala-Lee treats Fuller with respect, and never attempts to undermine his influence. But for all Fuller’s virtues, he wasn’t particularly honest. In the context of a truthful biography, that’s a more glaring character flaw than many others might be.
July 13, 2023
After almost 500 pages of Bucky, I’m not sure I understand him or how he came to be. How does a college dropout become a world famous scientist/architect?
The author never really explains how he acquired all of this knowledge except to say he played with blocks when he was young because his parents wouldn’t get him the glasses he needed. He drops out of Harvard and sort of joins the navy and then it 400 pages of Fuller pitching ideas and somehow acquiring financing for ideas that aren’t really explained. In the meantime, he’s having affairs with every woman who is younger than him all over the place. His wife sticks with him for some reason and the ideas keep coming. His car was crap. His housing was crap and never sold because it was impractical. People keep giving him money. He gets into domes and works on those for a while. Keeps giving talks and getting paid and then he dies.
Strange book. I’ve never read a biography before where I couldn’t figure out the person after reading it. Only
For fans of this guy.
The author never really explains how he acquired all of this knowledge except to say he played with blocks when he was young because his parents wouldn’t get him the glasses he needed. He drops out of Harvard and sort of joins the navy and then it 400 pages of Fuller pitching ideas and somehow acquiring financing for ideas that aren’t really explained. In the meantime, he’s having affairs with every woman who is younger than him all over the place. His wife sticks with him for some reason and the ideas keep coming. His car was crap. His housing was crap and never sold because it was impractical. People keep giving him money. He gets into domes and works on those for a while. Keeps giving talks and getting paid and then he dies.
Strange book. I’ve never read a biography before where I couldn’t figure out the person after reading it. Only
For fans of this guy.
February 28, 2023
I've always been aware of Buckminster Fuller, appreciated many geodesic domes, and loved the structures of the class of molecules named after him. But I've never really thought much more about him than that. So this detailed and carefully researched biography was basically all new to me. Overall Fuller definitely comes off as a very complicated figure, like so many widely revered men. For me I wish the book had spent a little more time, especially early on, telling me about the widely revered good and lasting things that Fuller accomplished, so that I could better contrast them with the complications. That said, by the end of the book, and especially during the conclusion, I felt like I got a good feel for the whole picture, good and bad, lasting and ephemeral.
January 7, 2024
Ya know, I didn't really know anything about Bucky before reading this, aside from his association with domes. But, I found it to be very engaging and I made it through 450 pages surprisingly quickly. It was not until the very end that I formed any opinion on Bucky for myself. Throughout the book I was amused at funny anecdotes, amazed at his tenacity, interested in the type of design work he was doing, and jealous of his apparent vision and focus. As soon as I finished I turned back to the passage that describes his revelation in 1928 where he concludes that "You and all men are here for the sake of other men" and decided for myself that yes, Bucky was a sincere utopian genius who should be revered and I am certain that I will be thinking about R. Buckminster Fuller for a long time.
April 3, 2024
An exhaustive account of Buckminster Fuller's life, inventions, therories, and thoughts. He met so many amazing people and had an influence on everything.
Quote from Fuller, when he was contemplating suicide after the death of his daughter
"You do not belong to you. You belong to the Universe. Your significance will remain forever obscure to you, but you may assume that you are fulfilling your role if you apply yourself to converting your experiences to the highest advantage of others. You and all men are here for the sake of other men."
He then chose to embark on "an experiment to find what a single individual could contribute to changing the world and benefiting all humanity."
Quote from Fuller, when he was contemplating suicide after the death of his daughter
"You do not belong to you. You belong to the Universe. Your significance will remain forever obscure to you, but you may assume that you are fulfilling your role if you apply yourself to converting your experiences to the highest advantage of others. You and all men are here for the sake of other men."
He then chose to embark on "an experiment to find what a single individual could contribute to changing the world and benefiting all humanity."
July 23, 2023
it was a difficult slog to get to the end. the author didn't paint Bucky in a very favorable light, and didn't spend much effort to highlight the good in Bucky's work opus. reading other reviews, i found a consensus to that end.
i hope the Epcot geodesic dome material is fire retardant, so it doesn't end up like the early dome (can't remember its location) and the Montreal dome that burned in a fast configration. not a real testiment of careful engineering (which seems to be his trademark work ethic).
i hope the Epcot geodesic dome material is fire retardant, so it doesn't end up like the early dome (can't remember its location) and the Montreal dome that burned in a fast configration. not a real testiment of careful engineering (which seems to be his trademark work ethic).
October 17, 2022
Alec Nevala-Lee has proven the “never meet your idols�. The biography of R. Buckminster Fuller describes him as self-aggrandizing, petty and verbose. The EPCOT Spaceship Earth is what got me interested in Bucky to begin with and he had little to know impact on the construction. Bucky traveled so much speaking about futurism. I travel for fun.
I live on Planet Earth! Man was born with legs, not roots!
I live on Planet Earth! Man was born with legs, not roots!
May 14, 2023
I was back and forth about whether I liked this book. At times it was a chore to read/listen to (I have the print version too). It's an exhaustive look at Buckminster Fuller, at times almost overwhelming in personal detail. But overall, I really liked the book and the in-depth examination of a decidedly complicated individual, who was a mix of showman and innovator. In the end, Bucky's insight and influence are undeniable and worth this careful examination.
May 10, 2025
A fascinating life
This biography way more interesting than I anticipated. All I really knew was that Buckminster Fuller created the geodesic dome, but he was quite the visionary. He created more than domes (think cars) and was quite influential in many circles. He was eccentric and also had quite a lot of liaisons, so this is not a dry account if a boring life. Even MC Escher made an appearance. Recommended.
This biography way more interesting than I anticipated. All I really knew was that Buckminster Fuller created the geodesic dome, but he was quite the visionary. He created more than domes (think cars) and was quite influential in many circles. He was eccentric and also had quite a lot of liaisons, so this is not a dry account if a boring life. Even MC Escher made an appearance. Recommended.
October 27, 2023
The book was largely a let down, not due to any fault of the author, but because fuller's life seemed like a succession of failures with no starking peaks or troughs, just a man who lived life committed to leaving a legacy on the world. I would not recommend this book to anyone looking for inspiration, but it is an interesting glimpse at a influential figure's life.
December 9, 2023
Filled with a barely coherent list of historical personalities and just the hint of a life story. What I learned in the half of the book I was able to complete is that the subject was a bad husband and a bad businessman. The attention to the minutest of details detracts from a comprehensible narrative, and I quit halfway.
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May 14, 2024As a graduate of southern Illinois university studying architecture, art, and design between 1968-73 I had the questionable experience of enrolling in a couple of bucky� classes. So, altho Nevala-Lee has done a superb job in bringing to life the disagreeable teacher I recall, it was a painful read for me.
May 4, 2023
Long and detailed but somehow never boring. Frank portrait that doesn’t shy away from Fuller’s less than stellar qualities. Especially enjoyed the epilogue with its vignettes of influence from chemistry to art.
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