st.martin's griffin press, 1981, softcover, illustrated, index, 468 pages, condition: as new.
A noted designer and thinker examines our crucial political, economic, ethical, and environmental dilemmas to show how we arrived at the present crisis stage and how humanity can correct its unprecedented threats to Spaceship Earth.
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 return to Earth, the engineers had to follow a "critical path" of approximately 2,000,000 tasks that had to be completed in correct sequence. Bucky felt that humanity has its own "critical path" program that must be followed to avoid war, and to create a peaceful and sustainable existence on Spaceship Earth.
I'm a huge Bucky Fuller fan, and feel that Critical Path is probably his capstone, career-summing book.
Buckminster Fuller was an American architect, systems theorist, writer, designer, inventor, philosopher, and futurist. He styled his name as R. Buckminster Fuller in his writings, publishing more than 30 books and coining or popularizing such terms as "Spaceship Earth", "Dymaxion" (e.g., Dymaxion house, Dymaxion car, Dymaxion map), "ephemeralization", "synergetics", and "tensegrity".
Fuller developed numerous inventions, mainly architectural designs, and popularized the widely known geodesic dome; carbon molecules known as fullerenes were later named by scientists for their structural and mathematical resemblance to geodesic spheres. He also served as the second World President of Mensa International from 1974 to 1983.