With all the hoopla surrounding last year’s 50th anniversary of Frank Lloyd Wright’s death and the opening of his landmark Guggenheim Museum, readers may have overlooked a spate of new monographs about the American master. Among the most noteworthy are the second and third volumes of Taschen’s exhaustive three-volume Complete Works, covering the periods 1917–1942 and 1943–59, respectively (Volume I, covering 1885–1916, is due out in August), and a trio of titles by Rizzoli—Frank Lloyd Wright: From Within Outward, an elegant catalog of last year’s Guggenheim exhibition; Frank Lloyd Wright, The Heroic Years, which focuses on the years 1920–1932, a bleak but exceptionally creative period in Wright’s life; and Frank Lloyd Wright: American Master, a handsome overview of his career, featuring hundreds of new photographs.

There is, of course, no dearth of books about Wright. Amazon lists no fewer than 2,376 titles. While these five volumes may not blaze any new trails, each of them is well organized and finely crafted, and together they provide a rich, multifaceted picture of one of the titans of American architecture. Regardless of how one views Wright’s work, anyone perusing these books cannot help but be struck by the extraordinary scope and astonishing abundance of his creative output. From his modest Usonian houses for the middle class to his grand estates for corporate titans; from his inspiring and innovative buildings for work, worship, and culture to his grandiose schemes to reinvent the modern city, Wright was constantly expanding and refining his architectural vocabulary. Read more…