Critical Path

R. Buckminster Fuller

Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller, Feb 15, 1982 - Architecture - 512 pages

The masterwork of a brilliant career, and an important document of the crisis now facing mankind. Today we find ourselves in the midst of the greatest crisis in the history of the human race. Technology has placed in our hands almost unlimited power at the very moment when we have run up against the limits of our resources aboard Spaceship Earth, as the crises of the late twentieth century—political, economic, environmental, and ethical—determine whether or not humanity survives. In this masterful summing up of an entire lifetime’s thought and concern, R. Buckminster Fuller addresses these crucial issues in his most significant, accessible, and urgent work. Critical Path traces the origins and evolution of humanity’s social, political, and economic systems from the obscure mists of prehistory, through the development of the great political empires, to the vast international corporate and political systems that control our destiny today to show how we got to our present situation and what options are available to man. With his customary brilliance, extraordinary energy, and unlimited devotion, Bucky Fuller shows how mankind can survive, and how each individual can respond to the unprecedented threat we face today. The crowning achievement of an extraordinary career, Critical Path offers the reader the excitement of understanding the essential dilemmas of our time and how responsible citizens can rise to meet this ultimate challenge to our future.  

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LibraryThing Review

User Review  - aneurysm1985 - LibraryThing

The title of Buckminster Fuller's classic late-life book Critical Path is inspired by the Apollo Project. Bucky estimated that in order for Apollo 11 to successfully launch, land on the moon, and ...

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - seaward - LibraryThing

R. Buckminster Fuller is regarded as one of the most important figures of the 20th century, renowned for his achievements as an inventor, designer, architect, philosopher, mathematician, and dogged ...

Contents

• Foreword: 6
• Twilight of the Worlds Power Structures: 17
• II: 247
• III: 442
• Chronology of Scientific Discoveries and Artifacts: 764
• Chronological Inventory of Prominent Scientific Technological: 800
• Index: 830

About the author

Buckminster Fuller (1895 - 1983) was an architect, engineer, geometrician, cartographer, philosopher, futurist, inventor of the famous geodesic dome, and one of the most brilliant thinkers of his time. Fuller was renowned for his comprehensive perspective on the world's problems. For more than five decades, he developed pioneering solutions reflecting his commitment to the potential of innovative design to create technology that does "more with less" and thereby improve human lives. The author of nearly 30 books, he spent much of his life traveling the world lecturing and discussing his ideas with thousands of audiences. In 1983, shortly before his death, he received the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, with a citation acknowledging that his "contributions as a geometrician, educator, and architect-designer are benchmarks of accomplishment in their fields." After Fuller's death, a team of chemists won the Nobel Prize for discovering a new carbon molecule with a structure similar to that of a geodesic dome, they named the molecule "buckminsterfullerene"—now commonly referred to in the scientific community as the buckyball. 

Bibliographic information

• Title: Critical Path
• Author: R. Buckminster Fuller
• Contributor: Kiyoshi Kuromiya
• Publisher: Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller, 1982
• ISBN: 0996827803, 9780996827805
• Length: 512 pages
• Subjects: Architecture / Sustainability & Green Design