You Say to Brick, Wendy Lesser
You Say to Brick, Wendy Lesser
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You Say to Brick
The Life of Louis Kahn

Author: Wendy Lesser

Narrator: Will Damron

Unabridged: 15 hr 8 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 06/27/2017

Synopsis

Born to a Jewish family in Estonia in 1901 and brought to America in 1906, the architect Louis Kahn grew up in poverty in Philadelphia; by the time of his death in 1974, he was widely recognized as one of the greatest architects of his era. Yet this enormous reputation was based on only a handful of masterpieces, all built during the last fifteen years of his life.

Perfectly complementing Nathaniel Kahn’s award-winning documentary, My Architect, Wendy Lesser’s You Say to Brick is a major exploration of the architect’s life and work. Kahn, perhaps more than any other twentieth-century American architect, was a “public” architect. Eschewing the usual corporate skyscrapers, hotels, and condominiums, he focused on medical and educational research facilities, government centers, museums, libraries, parks, religious buildings, and other structures that would serve the public good. Yet this warm, captivating person, beloved by students and admired by colleagues, was also a secretive and mysterious character hiding behind a series of masks.

About Wendy Lesser

Wendy Lesser is the founder and editor of the Threepenny Review and the author of a number of books, including Why I Read, which garnered rave reviews from coast to coast. She has written for the New York Times Book Review, the London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, and other publications. To complete You Say to Brick, she was awarded one of the first National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar awards, the only one given to a Californian in 2015.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Adam on August 12, 2017

I have not read many books about architecture, but I received "You Say to Brick" as a gift, and really enjoyed it. This is a very well-crafted biography of architect Louis Kahn. Author Wendy Lesser walks you through Kahn's life in a well-planned methodical trajectory, as if you were walking through......more

Goodreads review by Gunnar on February 14, 2025

I think this may be the first biography I’ve ever finished of my own accord. It was a gift from a friend, and sat unread for quite some time but I’m glad I finally did. My familiarity with Louis Kahn was pretty minimal, he was mentioned among other modernists such as Le Corbusier when I was studying......more

Goodreads review by Jill on March 19, 2017

Wendy Lesser's "You Say to Brick: The Life of Louis Kahn", is one of the finest biographies I've read. Her subject, Louis Kahn, was a complicated man who lived an ultra-complicated life. As a world-renowned architect, Kahn designed public buildings from Fort Worth to New Hampshire to India and Pakis......more

Goodreads review by MS on July 15, 2020

While I appreciate that the author does not declare interpretations or guess-work on Louis Kahn's life as absolute truths, the excessive use of "perhaps this" or "perhaps that" in this book weighs down the reading. The continuous speculation also makes the book longer than necessary. For instance, w......more

Goodreads review by Tony on October 04, 2020

Deeply satisfying look into the complicated life of a 20the century artistic icon. This is not a book of criticism. It is not a straight biography. It is a portrait of the artist as a....you g man, old man, success, failure, lout, mystic, teacher, father, and son. It helps to have some knowledge of......more

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