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		The Architect of Tomorrow Revisiting a master builder's pivotal journey to the United States. By Katherine A. Powers "Le Corbusier in America: Travels in the Land of the Timid" by Mardges Bacon (MIT Press; Cambridge, Mass.; 2001; 405 pages; $59.95) "I hope Le Corbusier may find America all he hoped to find it,” wrote Frank Lloyd Wright, in answer to an invitation to meet the Swiss-born architect. That is to say, he hoped not. Wright refused to meet the controversial traveler during his only visit to the United States, in 1935. He feared—as Le Corbusier dreamed—that the trip, with its lectures and introductions to potential clients, would not only promote Le Corbusier’s version of Modernism in American architecture and city planning, but also prove lucrative financially. As it happened, Le Corbusier was disappointed by the trip and felt betrayed by a people in whom he had based so many hopes, both idealistic and pecuniary. A couple of years after his return to Europe, Le Corbusier published his critical views and proposed remedies as Quand les cathédrales étaient blanches: Voyage aux pays des timides, a work in which polemics trumped analysis. Ten years later, its translation was published in America as When the Cathedrals Were White: A Journey to the Country of Timid People. In Le Corbusier in America: Travels in the Land of the Timid, Northeastern professor of architecture Mardges Bacon recreates the story of the disgruntled architect’s ill-conceived and ill-timed trip. She also crafts an engrossing account of the preconceptions and thwarted expectations that ensured both his own disillusionment and his hosts’ dismay. Bacon capably illustrates that, as a Modernist, Le Corbusier saw the United States in more abstract than particular terms; his vision was, in essence, a fantasy. He admired the country’s freedom from the fetters of tradition, its dynamic popular culture, its efficient streamlined industry, and other “magnificent First-Fruits of the new age.” And, above all, he applauded the skyscraper. America had energy. The nation was poised, in Le Corbusier’s view, on a cusp between a first machine age—which it had brought into being, and the contradictions of which had caused the Depression—and a second. The next machine age would introduce, through rationalized production and city planning, social and economic harmony. What the country lacked was direction—and that was where Le Corbusier saw a role for himself. Like most Modernists, Le Corbusier was contemptuous of American thought except as an expression of spontaneous vigor, such as popular culture. He looked to European leadership to bring about the successful realization of the American experiment. His experiences had so far confirmed this, for, before visiting the United States, he had known Americans who were avant-garde expatriates and wealthy cultural pilgrims, whose high opinion of French thought accorded with his own. Moreover, their respect for his creative design, palpably evident in the form of commissions, led him to believe he would find important and remunerative work in the United States. Indeed, his growing fame and controversial writings had elicited other invitations to visit before he finally accepted an offer from the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) and several universities for the fall of 1935. Le Corbusier’s simplistic conception of the country he was about to visit and his exalted view of his ability to influence public policy are nicely distilled in one of Bacon’s many adroitly chosen quotations. “My desire,” he wrote to the administrators of the MOMA, “is to be useful for something by speaking to certain circles of authority, and I have the intention to limit myself exclusively to New York and its satellites Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Mexico.” As Bacon describes, preparations for the trip were not smooth. The proposed arrangements and speaking fees, which reflected the U.S. economic climate, rankled Le Corbusier and offended his sense of his greatness. His insistence on traveling first class was finally acceded to, though he was forced to accept smaller honoraria for lectures. He stepped off the boat, however, in top form with an arresting pronouncement, snapped up by the press: New York’s skyscrapers were “much too small,” he declared. “They Should Be Huge and a Lot Farther Apart,” a headline elaborated. Le Corbusier’s provocative manner, which he maintained throughout the trip, was in part the act of a showman, and in part a reflection of his distress at what he found. He was disturbed by the disorderly street life and architectural chaos of New York; later, the sprawl and social dysfunction in Chicago affected him similarly. As he made his way from venue to venue, unsuccessful in finding clients, Le Corbusier’s views on America gathered vehemence. They were given a full airing in When the Cathedrals Were White—in which he even held architectural timidity responsible for the American woman’s overassertiveness (a trait he had observed in the college women he had met and conferred upon the sex as a whole). In the book, he recommended a scorched-earth policy of city planning: New York was “an enchanted catastrophe,” a locus of explosive force, that could and should be harnessed to rational planning—even if that meant, as it did to Le Corbusier, that it must first be demolished. In its place would be built Le Corbusier’s “Radiant City,” consisting of “great obelisks,” set far apart, affording “space and light and air and order.” In other words, the epitome of the second machine age. Richly detailed, deeply researched, and exhaustively footnoted, Bacon’s book examines the architect’s preconceptions and their effect on his impressions of the United States. Focusing on each leg of his trip, the author provides revealing accounts of his associations, and descriptions—often amusing—of the reactions his ideas evoked. But most tellingly, she exposes how Le Corbusier’s disappointment over his failure to gain commissions contributed to his overall disenchantment with the American people. Their resistance to realizing his schemes—that is, their failure to employ him professionally—can be explained, as Bacon notes, by the country’s wounded economy as much as by its “timidity.” Later, postwar prosperity and the many projects of “urban renewal” did, alas, see the implementation of some of his architectural theories in housing projects. Still, if Le Corbusier was the man that Bacon’s fine book has revealed him to be—arrogant and unrealistic, to be sure, but also idealistic and committed to social improvement—it is difficult to believe that he would have been happy with the result. Katherine A. Powers is a freelance writer living in Cambridge. She writes the column “A Reading Life” for the Boston Sunday Globe books section. "The Violence of Hate: Confronting Racism, Anti-Semitism, and Other Forms of Bigotry," By Jack Levin; Allyn & Bacon; 2002 Has prejudice declined to the point of irrelevance in our society? In his twenty-third book, Brudnick professor of sociology Jack Levin argues that bias persists at alarming levels. While acknowledging the increasingly complex nature of race relations in America, Levin discusses the economic and psychological advantages of hate, arguing that it is normal, and even rational, behavior. He also examines the mainstream’s stake in allowing bigotry to continue. Finally, the author proposes strategies for increasing the numbers of individuals willing to take active roles in altering the status quo. The Phoenix Effect: Nine Revitalizing Strategies No Business Can Do Without, By Carter Pate and Harlan Platt; John Wiley & Sons; 2002 Considering the current corporate climate, this guide, with its practical strategies for renewing organizations, is particularly well-timed. Turnaround expert Carter Pate and finance professor Harlan Platt—who together started the Association for Turnaround Professionals—provide real-life examples of how companies get into trouble and, more important, how they can dig their way out. The authors’ nine steps aim to help managers reorient a company and lead it toward success. The Phoenix Effect’s techniques are applicable to a range of corporate troubles, whether an organization’s in need of a tune-up or a major overhaul. Both insightful and eminently readable, this book will prove useful to any businessperson interested in methodologies for inciting change.