Frank Lloyd Wright

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Introduction
There are two lives of Frank Lloyd Wright: the one he created and the one he lived. The first, his own embellished version, is the standard Wright mythology - the architect as maverick genius and embattled, misunderstood loner.

Chapter 1: Part 1
The life starts with a lie: a changed birth date, from 1867 to 1869, the sort of small, white vanity lie usually embraced by women but common also among men. Like most age changes, it was done later in life.

Chapter 1: Part 2
In his account of the breakup of the marriage, written years later, after his mother's death, Wright accepted her claim of abandonment, although he had to have been keenly aware of what was really going on.

A Pulitzer Prize-winning arcitecture critic takes a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at an American pioneer - his art, his craft, and his life.

From the way we build to the way we live, Frank Lloyd Wright's influence on American architecture is visible all around us. Now, Ada Louise Huxtable, the Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture writer for The Wall Street Journal - and chief architecture critic for The New York Times for nearly twenty years - offers an outstanding look at the architect and the man. She explores the sources of his tumultuous and troubled life and his long career as master builder as well as his search for lasting, true love. Along the way, Huxtable introduces readers to Wright's masterpieces: Taliesin, rebuilt after tragedy and murder; the Imperial Hotel, one of the few structures left standing after Japan's catastrophic 1923 earthquake; and tranquil Fallingwater, to which millions have traveled to experience its quiet grace. Through the journey, Huxtable takes us not only into the mind of the man who drew the blueprints, but also into the very heart of the medium, which he changed forever. A story of great triumph and heartbreak, Frank Lloyd Wright is, like Wright's own creations, an expertly wrought tribute to a man whose genius lives on in the very landscape of American architecture.

Ada Louise Huxtable is a Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic. She is the author of several books, including Inventing Reality, Pier Luigi Nervi, and, most recently, The Unreal American. A MacArthur fellow, Huxtable is the architecture critic of The Wall Street Journal and was the architecture critic for The New York Times from 1963 to 1982..

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