Review
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"Wendy Lesser's You Say to Brick is easily the most complete narrative of Kahn's life and career, magnificently
researched and gracefully written . . . Her account is packed with ins, of both the architectural and psychological
kind . . . Kahn died far from the light. With Lesser's biography, the illumination is restored." ―Inga Saffron, New York
Times Book Review
"Lesser writes beautifully and engagingly . . . What Lesser adds to the Kahn narrative isn’t simply a pragmatic
understanding of his personal life. She allows the women in his life to emerge as far more than mere satellites to a
great male ego . . . The success of this biography lies in the author’s fundamental acceptance of the messiness of human
life." ―Philip Kennicott, Washington Post
"[Lesser] has an innate feel for Kahn’s architecture . . . Her biography is not the first we have of Kahn, but it is
notable for its warm, engaged, literate tone and its psychological acuity." ―Dwight Garner, New York Times
"[An] excellent new biography of Louis Kahn . . . Wendy Lesser has done the architect a great service with her
compelling and even-handed biography, honouring [Kahn's] belief that much can be learned if one takes the time to listen
to the materials at hand." ―Jessica Loudis, Times Literary Supplement
"[Lesser is] too smart a writer to waste her time tilting against the windmill of celebrity architecture. Instead, she
plays with the form of architectural biography to create a narrative that at once seems to accept the realities of our
time and to transcend them . . . Lesser has accomplished something very important here . . . She has helped us feel the
powerful emotional connection to space and form and light and materials that Kahn himself felt, and that is far more
than most architects’ biographies manage to do." ―Paul Goldberger, The Nation
"Fascinating . . . This remarkable, readable and humane book pairs painstaking research with poetic interpretations. No
detail is too small, as long as it sheds light on one of the 20th century’s most admired, influential architects."
―Claude Peck, Minneapolis Star Tribune
"[A] monumental new biography . . . Lesser is a keen observer . . . In You Say to Brick, her subtle interpretations of
conversational remarks by Kahn's s, and especially of Kahn's written ephemera, are luminous and deep." ―Thomas
de Monchaux, n+1
"[You Say to Brick] offers an impressively complete profile of Kahn . . . This volume joins the 2003 film My Architect,
directed by Kahn's son, Nathaniel, as an essential document of the architect's life." ―Julian Rose, Bookforum
"[A] superb new biography . . . A careful historian who also has a keen sense of the big picture, [Lesser] bores deeply
into Kahn’s complicated life, ultimately describing his architecture with as much sympathy and sophistication as she
brings to her analysis of his relationships with colleagues, clients, and family members. . . Lesser, throughout, makes
astute and sometimes surprising connections between the details of Kahn’s personal history and his architecture."
―Christopher Hawthorne, Architect Magazine
"The book is superbly researched . . . Ms Lesser captures the charisma of Kahn." ―The Economist
"Lesser's book is lyrical and personal . . . Lesser builds a truthful, appreciative profile of Philadelphia's most
prominent modernist." ―Philadelphia Inquirer
"Wendy Lesser has ingeniously organized her book . . . Her research . . . approaches the monumentality of Kahn's best
buildings. Biographers who write about architects sometimes err when it comes to the of the work but not
Lesser." ―Jack Quinan, Buffalo News
"If [You Say to Brick] inspires us to do more, whether to seek out deeper study of [Kahn's] works on our own or to see
the world with wider, more curious eyes, then Lesser has done something that the best biographers can hope to do but
which only a portion of them achieve. That she does so with a voice that can appeal to the uninitiated as well as the
scholar makes You Say to Brick all the more impressive, and a deep source of inspiration." ―Spectrum Culture
"[You Say to Brick is] a riveting account of Kahn's life . . . Lesser’s biography, at once reverential and bracingly
candid, serves as a powerful epitaph to Kahn’s achievements." ―Julia Klein, The Forward
"[Lesser is] a critic of unusual . . . [A]n intriguing speculation about the inner drives that propelled [Kahn] to
brilliant design and to numerous affairs, illegitimate children, and chaotic business practices." ―Harvard Magazine
"Stellar . . . Extensively researched . . . A splendid biography that penetrates the inner lives of Kahn's buildings as
well as the inner life of their creator." ―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"[A] supremely enlightening and involving chronicle of an avid and complicated creative life . . . Lesser tracks with
clarity and drama each demanding phase in Kahn's evolution as an ardent and magnetic architect and teacher" ―Booklist
(starred review)
"Exhaustively researched and poetically written, [You Say to Brick] offers a fitting and eminently accessible tribute to
an architect who so ardently sought to bring beauty to the public square." –Publishers Weekly
“Louis Kahn has long eluded serious attention. He needed careful, fierce, and passionate study to bring alive his
remarkable life and work. In Wendy Lesser he has found the perfect interlocutor. This book is a triumph.”―Edmund de Waal
“Louis Kahn was in many ways the philosopher king of American architecture, and the masterful buildings he produced
exert a hold on us that is even more powerful now than at his death more than four decades ago. Wendy Lesser’s You Say
to Brick combines a compelling narrative of Kahn’s unusual life with a sensitive and knowing analysis of his
extraordinary architecture. Few architectural biographies manage to be engaging, thought-provoking, and uplifting at the
same time, but this one does.” ―Paul Goldberger
“We are always intrigued, with great artists we respect, to learn how and what about their personal lives inspired their
work. Wendy Lesser’s You Say to Brick succeeds in realizing Kahn’s long journey from his youth in Europe to his late
re as one of the great architects of the twentieth century.” ―Moshe Safdie
“The American architect Louis Kahn was a luminous man, full of secrets, who made some of the most beautiful buildings of
the modern era. He was powerfully drawn to the romance of beginnings (in his love affairs no less than in his art), but
he also understood modern concrete. In You Say To Brick: The Life of Louis Kahn, Wendy Lesser knows that she has an
important but also wonderfully tricky subject on her hands. She brings to life the public art and the private man in
ways that do admirable justice to both.” ―Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan
"I was very pleased to read this wonderfully written book. It took me back to the memories of my time and conversation
with Lou. I must add that this book has indeed recorded and documented his life very well, and it brings the history of
Kahn's work and life alive." ―Balkrishna Doshi
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About the Author
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Wendy Lesser is the founder and editor of The Threepenny Review and the author of a novel and several
previous books of nonfiction, including Why I Read (FSG, 2014), 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 this biography, she was awarded one of the first National Endowment for the Humanities Public
Scholar awards, the only one given to a Californian in 2015.
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