The Buckminster Fuller Reader

by R. Buckminster Fuller, James Mellor, ed., James Meller

edited and introduced by James Meller.This collection originally published, Cape, 1970.Bibl.p.387-389. - Index.Dates of available 1972.398,[16]p. : ill., facsim., maps ; 20cm.

Genres: Philosophy, Science, Nonfiction, Engineering, Biography, Essays

384 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1970

About the author

Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller was an American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, and inventor.

Fuller published more than 30 books, coining or popularizing terms such as "Spaceship Earth", ephemeralization, and synergetic. He also developed numerous inventions, mainly architectural designs, and popularized the widely known geodesic dome. Carbon molecules known as fullerenes were later named by scientists for their structural and mathematical resemblance to geodesic spheres.

Buckminster Fuller was the second president of Mensa from 1974 to 1983.

Reviews

[Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a collection of essays and speeches given by Fuller throughout his career, mostly focused on his architectural and scientific work. One of the recurring themes of the book was the danger of over-specialization: the situation in which specialists are unable to communicate with each other and the task of integrating their work is left largely to intellectual inferiors. Fuller believed that architects had the only technical profession concerned with putting things together in an era of the increased fractionation by intensive specialization. Hence, this book was largely aimed towards the architect/engineer populations to which Fuller spoke throughout his career.

[Douglas Murphy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oh, where to start? The prose is shocking, the neologisms irritating, the endless digressions maddening, but it's still coming from one of the most off-piste and brilliant minds of the 20th century. Reading so much of him really helps you understand that he was essentially a visionary engineer, and nowhere near being a physicist, nor a philosopher, and certainly not a politician. And it's also interesting to note that the systematic thinking he was trying to bring into being is now part of the daily mind of billions, which increasingly moves his arguments into the world of a mode of production now truly past…