Le Corbusier: A Life
*Starred Review* Universally recognized for his radical theories and daring buildings, the architect, urban designer, utopist, and painter who called himself Le Corbusier has nonetheless remained an enigma. Now Weber, an exceptional arts biographer, delivers the first comprehensive biography of Charles-Édouard Jeanneret. Born in 1887 to Swiss Calvinists, he escaped his Alpine watchmaking hometown at 19 and embarked on a life of work, travel, and controversy. Anchored in Paris, he ran a brick factory, obsessed over sex, started a magazine, and became a self-taught architect on a mission to improve the world. Cascading detail makes this a towering work. What makes it compelling is the masterful use Weber makes of his unprecedented access to the architect’s wildly expressive letters. Liberally quoted throughout, these rants, pleas, and manifestos chart Le Corbusier’s knotty relationship with his parents; marriage to lonely, alcoholic Yvonne; and shipboard romance with Josephine Baker. Weber sees Le Corbusier, who was blind in one eye and unconscionably opportunistic, as straddling the line between “genius and insanity” during the epic struggles to bring his revolutionary ideas to fruition. Both megalomaniacal and brilliant, Le Corbusier emerges from Weber’s mesmerizing pages in all his complexity. --Donna Seaman