Frank Lloyd Wright

A Biography

Secrest Meryle

Meryle Secrest's "Frank Lloyd Wright: A Biography" focuses on Wright's family history, personal adventures, and colorful friends and family. Secrest had unprecedented access to an archive of over one hundred thousand of Wright's letters, photographs, drawings, and books. She also interviewed surviving devotees, students, and relatives. The result is an explicit portrait of both the genius architect and the provocative con-man.

Contents:

Acknowledgments
1. Bedd Taliesin: Taliesin's Grave
2. The Black Spot
3. The Shining Brow
4. Aladdin
5. Lieber Meister
6. Sermons in Stones
7. A House Divided
8. Flower in the Crannied Wall
9. Lord of Her Waking Dreams
10. The Cauldron
11. The Cause Conservative
12. A Stern Chase
13. Truth Against the World
14. Work Song
15. The World's Greatest Architect
16. Taliesin
17. Broad Acres
18. The Revolutionist as Architect
19. That Strange Disease, Humility
20. The Shining Land
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index

About the Author

Meryle Secrest has written biographies of, among others, Romaine Brooks, Bernard Berenson, Kenneth Clark, Salvador Dali, Stephen Sondheim, and Frank Lloyd Wright, the last available from the Unviersity of Chicago Press.

Reviews

"Secrest seizes the themes most evocative of certain of our cultural myths, forging them into a coherent and emotionally plausible narrative" – New Republic

"An engaging narrative" – New York Times Book Review

"The real triumph of this biography... is the link it makes between Frank Lloyd Wright's personal life and his architecture" – The Economist

"Secrest's achievement is to etch Wright's character in sharp relief... [She] presents Wright in his every guise" – Blair Kamin, Chicago Tribune

"An extremely engaging profile" – The Philadelphia Inquirer

"A spellbinding portrait" – Library Journal

"The best [biography] so far, a huge and definitive accumulation of fact" – Time

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