From the author of the Hugo and Locus Award finalist Astounding comes a biography of the visionary designer who defined the rules of startup culture and shaped America’s idea of the future.
Nevala-Lee examines Fuller’s life and work in comprehensive detail. He seems to have spoken to everyone living who had a personal or professional association with Fuller; there are 129 pages of endnotes ... The author clearly admires his subject, which makes some aspects of his dispassionate narrative all the more unsettling ... For someone like this reader, who met and was influenced by Fuller, reading these revelations is a chastening experience. In his public appearances, Fuller could come across as a selfless seer, almost a secular saint; in Nevala-Lee’s biography he is all too human ... The strength of this carefully researched and fair-minded biography is that the reader comes away with a greater understanding of a deeply complicated individual who overcame obstacles — many of his own making — to achieve a kind of imperfect greatness.
Alec Nevala-Lee’s new biography, Inventor of the Future, fact-checks Fuller’s legend and then corrects the record ... He resists the hypnotic whirlpool surrounding Fuller ... Whenever possible, Nevala-Lee corrects Fuller as he cites him, the embellished version followed by the correct, less glamorous version. At other times, the reader is left wondering if what’s written on the page really happened ... That the Buckminster Fuller Estate does not agree with Nevala-Lee’s conclusions has to be the book’s most ringing endorsement.
... authoritative ... tells Fuller’s story in greater detail than ever ... takes the reader on a long and arduous journey, accompanying Fuller as he tirelessly dives into new ventures intended to change the world, never managing to make them commercially successful ... Mr. Nevala-Lee’s account prompts some interesting speculations about the philosophical roots of Fuller’s outlook and agenda.
