The Critic: Ada Louise Huxtable and the Building of Modern America

The extraordinary life of the pioneering New York Times architecture critic who changed how Americans saw our cities.

For fifty years, Ada Louise Huxtable (1921–2013) was the preeminent writer on architecture in America and a passionate voice in defense of civic beauty and the public good. The nation’s first full-time architecture critic, she won a MacArthur “genius” grant and the first Pulitzer Prize ever awarded for criticism. Christine Cipriani’s magisterial biography traces Huxtable’s wo...