From one of our foremost architectural writers: an engaging, brilliant exploration of the life and work of the most famous architect of our time, and one of the few architects ever to be widely admired by both critics and the general public.

This first full-fledged critical biography of Frank Gehry presents and evaluates the work of a man whom fifty architects, critics, and historians assembled by Vanity Fair designated "the most important architect in the world." It discusses at length his major buildings: from his own house--an "exploded" Dutch Colonial in Santa Monica--to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, which has almost single-handedly transformed contemporary architecture. It considers the work in light of Gehry's personal life: the influence of his immigrant grandparents, his two marriages, his close relationships to an unusual circle of celebrated clients and friends, his longtime therapist. It analyzes his carefully created "aw, shucks" persona and the intense ambition it masks; examines Gehry's anxieties about fame and how his "outsider" status as a Los Angeles architect allowed him to experiment in useful ways; and finally discusses how he thinks about and employs technology to change not just the way a building can look but the way architecture itself is practiced.

Paul Goldberger, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, spent fifteen years as the architecture critic for The New Yorker and began his career at The New York Times, where he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism for his writing on architecture. He is the author of many books, most recently, Why Architecture Matters, Building Up and Tearing Down: Reflections on the Age of Architecture, and Up From Zero. He teaches at the New School and lectures widely around the country on architecture, design, historic preservation, and cities. He and his wife, Susan Solomon, live in New York City.