From Library Journal
A biography of the man and his ideas, with secondary emphasis on the build ings. Schulze (Art, Lake Forest Col lege) has had the full cooperation of the Mies Archives at the Museum of Mod ern Art and has done extensive re search and interviews with Mies's con temporaries, students, and intimates. The picture of Mies which emerges is honest and detailed, fair and balanced. Coupled with David Spaeth's Mies van der Rohe ( LJ 5/1/85), which is more de tailed on Mies's architecture, Schulze's book gives a picture in the round. It is well written and flows smoothly, with particularly good attention to Mies's youth in Aachen and the background of Weimar culture. Occasionally one misses illustrations which the narrative implies, but this is still an excellent book. Recommended. Jack Perry Brown, Art Inst. of Chicago Libs.Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.


Book Description
Franz Schulze's acclaimed biography is a captivating story of the life, designs, and ideas that made Mies van der Rohe one of the world's most celebrated modern architects.

"The most comprehensive book ever written about the master designer and, by any measure, the best....This is a genuinely readable book....Because no writer has ever before probed into Mies's life at such depth, we have here the first definitive reconstruction of the architect's personal habits, loves, fears, triumphs, loneliness and (in his old age) agonies."--Paul Gapp, Chicago Tribune

"A herculean, generally successful effort to present Mies's work in terms of both character and context....The substance is impressive and much of the material is fresh and revealing....This book has obviously been a long labor of love and respect for which no source has been left untouched."--Ada Louise Huxtable, New York Times Book Review

"Schulze's excellent book...is absolutely worthy of its subject. Soundly researched, vividly detailed, and hard to fault critically, it is the most complete survey ever written of Mies'[s] life and works....No one else has approached Schulze's achievement in telling the whole story over eight decades."--Allan Temko, San Francisco Chronicle Review

"Schulze has both the gift of an architectural historian able to render Mies's building innovations and that of a biographer able to paint the humanity and shortcomings of the man."--Jane Holtz Kay, Christian Science Monitor

"By its broad scope, its eloquent style, and, above all, its prodigious scholarship, this book clearly establishes itself as an indispensable volume for the library of the serious Mies scholar."--Louis Rocah, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians

"In Schulze's hands Mies is no longer the impassive monolith he has sometimes seemed to be, but a complex human being whose varying moods reflected and affected the vicissitudes of his life and work....Yet, in this model architectural biography, [Schulze] also knows and brilliantly demonstrates the integral nexus of architecture and life."--Thomas S. Hines, Progressive Architecture

"Franz Schulze's Mies van der Rohe: A Critical Biography captivates from the very first paragraph....The writer is a skillful storyteller. In his hands, Mies's life acquires the intensity and dramatic progression of a novel."--Juan Pablo Bonta, Design Book Review

"A revelation....The man who emerges from its pages is not cold and rational but exuberant and illogical."--Donald Davis, Newsweek

"[A] readable, well-researched and sympathetic biography."--Mark Girouard, Washington Post Book World

"The standard life of Mies for some time to come."--William H. Jordy, The New Criterion

"[A] distinguished and eloquent biography."--Paul Goldberger, New York Times

"[A] magnificent biography."--Diana Ketcham, The Oakland Tribune

FROM THE PUBLISHER