Le Corbusier in America: Travels in the Land of the Timid

And for a blow-by-blow of two months in the life of the master, there is now Le Corbusier in America: Travels in the Land of the Timid, which chronicles P re Corbu's fruitless 1935 trawl for commissions. Northeastern University professor of art and architecture Mardges Bacon painstakingly (with more than 195 mostly b&w illustrations) but compellingly follows Corb on the trip that would result in his memoir When the Cathedrals Were White: A Journey to the Country of Timid People, from which she cribs her title. Arriving in New York, Le Corbusier made stops at MoMA, Columbia, Yale and Vassar, moving through to Michigan and beyond, lecturing and inciting architectural controversy at every point yet leading, Bacon argues, to a subsequent ""Americanization"" of his work. ( June)