The Restless Hungarian
Author | : Tom Weidlinger |
Publisher | : Simon and Schuster |
Total Pages | : 350 |
Release | : 2019-04-16 |
ISBN-13 | : 9781943006977 |
ISBN-10 | : 1943006970 |
Rating | : 4/5 (70 Downloads) |
Download or read book The Restless Hungarian written by Tom Weidlinger and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2019-04-16 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Restless Hungarian is the saga of an extraordinary life set against the history of the rise of modernism, the Jewish Diaspora, and the Cold War. A Hungarian Jew whose inquiring spirit helped him to escape the Holocaust, Paul Weidlinger became one of the most creative structural engineers of the twentieth century. As a young architect, he broke ranks with the great modernists with his radical idea of the “Joy of Space.” As an engineer, he created the strength behind the beauty in mid-century modern skyscrapers, churches, museums, and he gave concrete form to the eccentric monumental sculptures of Pablo Picasso, Isamu Noguchi, and Jean Dubuffet. In his private life, he was a divided man, living behind a wall of denial as he lost his family to war, mental illness, and suicide. In telling his father’s story, the author sifts meaning from the inspiring and contradictory narratives of a life: a motherless child and a captain of industry, a clandestine communist who designed silos for the world’s deadliest weapons during the Cold War, a Jewish refugee who denied he was a Jew, a husband who was terrified of his wife’s madness, and a man whose personal saints were artists.