Basic Frank Lloyd Wright: Legend and Fact About America's Most Creative Architect

In this very compact volume are related the significant events in the architect's life from his unsettling boyhood in a disruptive family environment in the mid-nineteenth century, through a series of personal excesses and tragedies while at the same time he blazes a new trail for American architecture. The book concentrates on his personal life as it also chronicles, in layman's language, the legendary stories of his professional triumphs.

Henry J. Michel has served as docent/interperter at several Wright-desiged houses for nearly a decade and has compiled two visitor guidebooks to Wright sites in California and Arizona. Not trained in architecture, engineering or design, he writes from the perspective of the thousands of typical visitor to the many Wright structures throughout the country. Ironically, he grew up in the shadows of Wright's earliest works, yetknew little about those homes he saw as he cycled or drove the streets of Oak Park, Ill. Years later, researching for a freelance article about Wright's Johnson Wax Co. building led to a late-blooming appreciation of the architects life and to the volunteer service as docent. That work convinced him that many visitors would enjoy an easy-reading overview of the architect's life.