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The autobiography of an idea. Foreword by Claude Bragdon. With a new introd. by Ralph Marlowe Line, and 35 illus. of Sullivan's works selected and photographed by Ralph Marlowe Line fo [Leather Bound]
Leather Binding on Spine and Corners with Golden Leaf Printing on round Spine (extra customization on request like complete leather, Golden Screen printing in Front, Color Leather, Colored book etc.) Reprinted in 2018 with the help of original edition published long back [1956]. This book is printed in black & white, sewing binding for longer life, printed on high quality Paper, re-sized as per Current standards, professionally processed without changing its contents. As these are old books, we processed each page manually and make them readable but in some cases some pages which are blur or missing or black spots. If it is multi volume set, then it is only single volume. We expect that you will understand our compulsion in these books. We found this book important for the readers who want to know more about our old treasure so we brought it back to the shelves. Hope you will like it and give your comments and suggestions. - English, Pages 416. COMPLETE LEATHER WILL COST YOU EXTRA US$ 25 APART FROM THE LEATHER BOUND BOOKS. {FOLIO EDITION IS ALSO AVAILABLE.} The autobiography of an idea. Foreword by Claude Bragdon. With a new introd. by Ralph Marlowe Line, and 35 illus. of Sullivan's works selected and photographed by Ralph Marlowe Line for this ed. 1956 [Leather Bound] by Sullivan, Louis H..
416 pages, Leather Bound
First published June 1, 1956
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
October 12, 2023
You live in Chicago for a while, you’re sold. For me Louis Sullivan is Chicago. Every bit as much as his disciple Frank Lloyd Wright.
In his day, Sullivan was hailed as one of the world’s great designers but as he grew old and new ideas overtook his own, he slipped out of sight and into poverty.
This book was written in that slack time, when Frank Lloyd Wright, with his own fame in the ascendant, cared enough about his Lieber Meister to call on him with some financial help and offer him advice. According to FLW’s own autobiography written many years later, getting Sullivan to put his thoughts and ideas down on paper was something he recommended to help his friend break out of a pessimism gripping his declining years.
It seemed to work.
The tone is light and energetic, spilling over in the first section with the excitement and energy of a growing boy, then blossoming into the developing ideas and convictions of a young man with plans to take them wherever they led. And they led him to Chicago where, learning his trade, understanding and extending new technologies, he sweeps us on through his early years, not so much by way of an autobiography, more as a way of walking with him through the thrill of a city ripe for change and eager to try his advanced architectural theories.
Written as a third-person narrative, published in 1924, the same year he died, it's a wonderful thing to have left for us to read.
In his day, Sullivan was hailed as one of the world’s great designers but as he grew old and new ideas overtook his own, he slipped out of sight and into poverty.
This book was written in that slack time, when Frank Lloyd Wright, with his own fame in the ascendant, cared enough about his Lieber Meister to call on him with some financial help and offer him advice. According to FLW’s own autobiography written many years later, getting Sullivan to put his thoughts and ideas down on paper was something he recommended to help his friend break out of a pessimism gripping his declining years.
It seemed to work.
The tone is light and energetic, spilling over in the first section with the excitement and energy of a growing boy, then blossoming into the developing ideas and convictions of a young man with plans to take them wherever they led. And they led him to Chicago where, learning his trade, understanding and extending new technologies, he sweeps us on through his early years, not so much by way of an autobiography, more as a way of walking with him through the thrill of a city ripe for change and eager to try his advanced architectural theories.
Written as a third-person narrative, published in 1924, the same year he died, it's a wonderful thing to have left for us to read.
September 18, 2019
This book was incredible, especially for a book that I just picked off the shelf without a recommendation. To be sure, the book starts out at Louis' very young years and spends significant time in that period, but the book is also not meant to be a collection of dates and events as in a conventional autobiography. Rather, Sullivan is outlining the formation of his ideas which began very young. If you can soldier through to the point where he graduates from middle school, the ideas become more fully formed and engaging, so that by the time he is working as a draftsman, you are swept along.
I also found Sullivan's distaste for abuses of power and force very refreshing. Although a product of the nineteenth century, he does not glorify war or violence in the least. When passing his exams in Paris, Sullivan was asked to give an account of the ten emperors of Rome:
Another half-hour of talk as Louis covered the g round, from the bookish point of view, and made a few remarks on his own account, which led the professor to say: "You do not seem to be in sympathy with Roman civilization." "No," said Louis, "I feel out of touch with a civilization whose glory was based on force."
Although much of the book does detail Sullivan's life and the development of ideas, there are times when he digresses to state his ideas about humans and creativity:
Thus it is that man himself, as it were, leaps the chasm, through the adventurous co-ordination of his power to inquire and his power to do. And thus the natural man ever enlarges his range of beneficence. His life experiences are real. He reverses the dictum "I think: Therefore I am." It becomes in him, I am: Therefore I inquire and do! It is this affirmative "I AM" that is man’s reality.
An incredible thinker and creator, Louis Sullivan's work is well worth the read. I recommend it to anyone interested in ideas and their development.
I also found Sullivan's distaste for abuses of power and force very refreshing. Although a product of the nineteenth century, he does not glorify war or violence in the least. When passing his exams in Paris, Sullivan was asked to give an account of the ten emperors of Rome:
Another half-hour of talk as Louis covered the g round, from the bookish point of view, and made a few remarks on his own account, which led the professor to say: "You do not seem to be in sympathy with Roman civilization." "No," said Louis, "I feel out of touch with a civilization whose glory was based on force."
Although much of the book does detail Sullivan's life and the development of ideas, there are times when he digresses to state his ideas about humans and creativity:
Thus it is that man himself, as it were, leaps the chasm, through the adventurous co-ordination of his power to inquire and his power to do. And thus the natural man ever enlarges his range of beneficence. His life experiences are real. He reverses the dictum "I think: Therefore I am." It becomes in him, I am: Therefore I inquire and do! It is this affirmative "I AM" that is man’s reality.
An incredible thinker and creator, Louis Sullivan's work is well worth the read. I recommend it to anyone interested in ideas and their development.
September 7, 2018
If you do not participate in Architecture or engage a creative profession, you may dismiss this book as trivial. That's okay; I understand. If you don't like the third person narrative because you think an autobiography should be written in first-person, that's okay; I understand. But if you read the book with some expectation and don't give the author the freedom to tell you a story without restrictions, then that's not okay; I don't understand.
In 1895, Louis Sullivan, the mentor to the greatest Architect of modern America, and a man that was living in an age of architecture that was undergoing great change, wrote his autobiography (1922) at the (seemingly) end of a very successful career, but also in a time when he divorced himself from Dankmar Adler, or rather Adler proposed the divorce. Sullivan was very upset. He was competing in the Chicago market during a depression, when others who looked at architecture like a business. Sullivan couldn't do that; he insisted upon artistic purity. Sullivan wasn't interested in Architecture as a money-making ventures. He was interested in what he experienced as a child.
To love this book is to read it as it was intended, to remember the time it was written in, and to sympathize with the author who pours the very soul of his childhood being onto the written page in the hopes that you share in the wonders, delights, and lessons that formed the very being of Louis Sullivan.
Fore more, I suggest "Louis Sullivan: The Struggle for American Architecture" by Whitecap Films in association with Stock Yard Films.
In 1895, Louis Sullivan, the mentor to the greatest Architect of modern America, and a man that was living in an age of architecture that was undergoing great change, wrote his autobiography (1922) at the (seemingly) end of a very successful career, but also in a time when he divorced himself from Dankmar Adler, or rather Adler proposed the divorce. Sullivan was very upset. He was competing in the Chicago market during a depression, when others who looked at architecture like a business. Sullivan couldn't do that; he insisted upon artistic purity. Sullivan wasn't interested in Architecture as a money-making ventures. He was interested in what he experienced as a child.
To love this book is to read it as it was intended, to remember the time it was written in, and to sympathize with the author who pours the very soul of his childhood being onto the written page in the hopes that you share in the wonders, delights, and lessons that formed the very being of Louis Sullivan.
Fore more, I suggest "Louis Sullivan: The Struggle for American Architecture" by Whitecap Films in association with Stock Yard Films.
February 27, 2015
This book was not quite what I was expecting based on the description on the back. It may be the fact that it is an autobiography written in the third person or the writing style in general, but I found it hard to get into and relate to on a personal level. It is written in a poetic and at times grandiose style that tries to express the important impressions on a young boy as he learns and grows into manhood. Some of it is effective, some of it is not.
I found his descriptions of friends or people of influence to be the most compelling passages of the book for me. He seemed to be able to capture the essence of physicality and personality in a way that felt personal and true. I wish I felt the same about his writing on the ideas he was in the process of culminating over the course of the book. He described an essay he presented at The Western Association of Architects convention and its less than stellar reception. He looked for appreciation from a more sympathetic corner with this result: “So he sent a copy to his aged friend, Professor of Latin in the University of Michigan, who wrote in return: ‘The language is beautiful, but what on earth you are talking about I have not the faintest idea.'”
I got the most out of the last third of this book after he started studying architecture and taking an interest in school. I appreciated his perspective on late 1880’s Chicago and the impact of the World’s Fair of 1893. I would have liked to hear more about some of his early projects and relationships with clients that allowed him to push his influential ideas forward.
I found his descriptions of friends or people of influence to be the most compelling passages of the book for me. He seemed to be able to capture the essence of physicality and personality in a way that felt personal and true. I wish I felt the same about his writing on the ideas he was in the process of culminating over the course of the book. He described an essay he presented at The Western Association of Architects convention and its less than stellar reception. He looked for appreciation from a more sympathetic corner with this result: “So he sent a copy to his aged friend, Professor of Latin in the University of Michigan, who wrote in return: ‘The language is beautiful, but what on earth you are talking about I have not the faintest idea.'”
I got the most out of the last third of this book after he started studying architecture and taking an interest in school. I appreciated his perspective on late 1880’s Chicago and the impact of the World’s Fair of 1893. I would have liked to hear more about some of his early projects and relationships with clients that allowed him to push his influential ideas forward.
August 31, 2021
Rapturously overwritten, but marvelous to behold because Sullivan spends 200 pages describing the wonders of childhood and boyhood. The title is apt; this is not an autobiography. By the final third of the book, Sullivan unfolds the idea he has been developing: the utopian possibility of beneficial human power making for peace and harmony on Earth, combining all the richly nurtured and carefully harnessed physical, mental, and imaginative capacities of human beings. A bridge spanning the void above a river remains the most luminous symbol of this collective action. It's fitting that Sullivan followed his idea through to realize it in skyscrapers, a wholly new type of dwelling in which people live and work. I only wish he spent more time writing about how he designed and built his structures. At least his breathless descriptions of the rapid technological changes at the turn of the twentieth century made up for it.
This Dover edition contains three dozen sharp photographs of buildings Sullivan designed.
This Dover edition contains three dozen sharp photographs of buildings Sullivan designed.
July 26, 2015
Despite my high rating, I'm not at all surprised to see a lot of people who disagree. In many ways it's an odd and bewildering book: an autobiography told in the third person, full of purple prose, apocryphal conversations, enough drama to fill the Auditorium Building, and a probably unreliable narrator. And yet: if you want to know what went on in Sullivan's brain, and what his beliefs were, then this is the book to read. Forget a straight narrative about "this happened to me at this time, and then this happened;" as the title says, it's not an autobiography of LHS but of the birth of the philosophies that drove his buildings, his beliefs and his relationships. You may not walk away with much knowledge of his life; but you will be vastly more equipped to understand his work. And hey, once you get over the purpleness, it's fun to read.
August 5, 2021
A quote from page 303 sums it up best:
“The language is beautiful, but what on earth you are talking about I have not the faintest idea.”
“The language is beautiful, but what on earth you are talking about I have not the faintest idea.”
July 31, 2025
Although portions of the book were interesting to me, I wasn't particularly enamored with its reading.
The language was too stilted and more like a textbook.
The language was too stilted and more like a textbook.
June 16, 2014
Poorly written, third person? I skimmed through, just couldn't force myself to read it, the horror. Although a very influential architect, not a writer. I can't believe I bought this book.
Read that he had some influence over Ayn Rand, so if you like her, you might be able to stomach this one.
Read that he had some influence over Ayn Rand, so if you like her, you might be able to stomach this one.
November 26, 2007
Loius Sullivan's descriptions of spending time as a young boy exploring the wilderness around his grandparent's rural farm are unbelievable. I lost it around the second-to-last chapter in this book, where Sullivan starts waxing poetic and listing major metaphors for his simple concepts.
March 13, 2010
What can I say? He write his autobiography in the third person...
January 14, 2017
The first chapters are delightful. The passion and the detail of Sullivan experiences with nature are amazing. Unfortunately, the childish vision gets lost towards the end.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews