…easily the most complete narrative of Kahn's life and career, magnificently researched and gracefully written. As the founder of The Threepenny Review…Lesser has a background that's literary, yet her account is packed with insights, of both the architectural and psychological kind…[Kahn's] buildings are works of art that need to be experienced by a human body moving through space to be fully understood. Lesser does readers a service by interspersing her narrative with "In Situ" chapters that serve as guides to his designs and vividly conjure the experience of walking through his buildings. Only by such direct experience, she writes, "can you perceive…how many observations about light and shadow and weight and transcendence it is making"…Kahn died far from the light. With Lesser's biography, the illumination is restored.

[Lesser's] biography is not the first we have of Kahn, but it is notable for its warm, engaged, literate tone and its psychological acuity…[Lesser] has an innate feel for Kahn's architecture.

09/19/2016
Lesser (Why I Read) doesn’t merely chronicle the life of Louis Kahn, who came to America from Estonia with his impoverished family and gradually muscled his way into the pantheon of the 20th century’s most celebrated architects. She also manages to let the reader vicariously experience Kahn’s architecture, interspersing this biography with elegant vignettes in which she walks through his most iconic structures. Her enthusiasm for Kahn’s architecture is infectious. Kahn began his professional career designing housing for destitute workers during the Great Depression, and his subsequent architecture projects (always public: museums, churches, libraries, and government buildings) were invariably designed in the egalitarian spirit of bringing beauty to all social classes. These palatial concrete structures were unmistakably modern, but they nevertheless owed much to Roman architecture, and, like the Colosseum, utilize natural light as a nearly palpable architectural element. Lesser breaks from a chronological narrative, instead beginning with Kahn’s death and ending with his childhood, where she finally divulges the story behind the scars that so cruelly marked Kahn’s face. Exhaustively researched and poetically written, Lesser’s book offers a fitting and eminently accessible tribute to an architect who so ardently sought to bring beauty to the public square. B&w photos. (Mar.)

"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 insights, 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 intimates, 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 treatment 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 scope . . . [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 recognition 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

"A splendid biography that penetrates the inner lives of Kahn's buildings as well as the inner life of their creator." —Kirkus Starred Review

02/01/2017
There are many books about Philadelphia-based architect Louis Kahn (1901–74) and his works. Lesser, a novelist and critic (Music for Silenced Voices) has written a clear-eyed biography of this fascinating man who produced some great architecture. The outline of Kahn's life is known, so for this portrait, the author interviewed family members, employees, clients, colleagues, and friends to gain deeper insights. She toured his most famous works to consult with users and record personal impressions. Injured and sickly as a child, Kahn became something of a visual arts prodigy. One of Lesser's points is that he always practiced as a dedicated artist rather than a businessman of design. He worked very hard, charmed clients with his philosophy, and delivered iconic spatial solutions. However, most of his buildings were completed late and over budget. This book also tracks the architect's studio leadership and his unorthodox family life; he comes across as flawed yet beloved. When Kahn died suddenly, associates stepped in to complete unfinished projects as he would have wished. VERDICT Lesser's treatment humanizes Kahn by highlighting motivation, struggles, and failures that ultimately helped to inform his masterpieces. This biography will appeal to readers with an interest in 20th-century design and culture.[See Prepub Alert, 10/3/16.]—David R. Conn, formerly with Surrey Libs., BC

★ 2016-12-05
A new, in-depth biography of the noted American architect. Threepenny Review founder and editor Lesser (Why I Read: The Serious Pleasure of Books, 2014, etc.) begins her stellar biography at the end, with Kahn's death (1901-1974). At the time, the renowned architect, who was "famous for his energy," was "tired." He had just returned from a long overseas trip and had a heart attack in Penn Station in New York. Lesser describes Kahn as "affable, conciliatory, and a bit self-mocking," warm and captivating but secretive (he had two affairs while married). His output was small, but his best buildings were "beautiful in a surprising new way." Kahn came to America from Estonia in 1906 when he was 5, his young face and hands scarred from a fiery accident. Always a brilliant drawer (he was ambidextrous), he received a good education and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1924. In 1935, he worked on a new workers' housing project in Washington, D.C., and soon started his own firm. In 1954, "I discovered myself after designing that little concrete-block bath house in Trenton." Concrete and brick would forever be his favorite construction materials. Lesser punctuates the narrative with five lengthy sections of " ‘in situ' descriptions of what it feels like to move through his built structures." The author visited them all. Included are the Salk Institute in San Diego (1959), with its enormous, distinctive plaza. It would be the "only profitable project that Kahn ever undertook." Also included is his "most supremely beautiful accomplishment," the National Assembly Building in Dhaka, Bangladesh, which was the biggest project he ever took on and "in many ways the most difficult." Extensively researched, the book is full of quotes from letters and interviews, providing an intimate portrait of his personality and genius. A splendid biography that penetrates the inner lives of Kahn's buildings as well as the inner life of their creator.