Nine Chains to the Moon

Book excerpt: New edition of Buckminster Fuller’s first work published in 1938, which was promoted by Albert Einstein. In 43 chapters the constructor, visionary, inventor, designer, creator of language, and spectacular performer rolls out the art of independent thought. Fuller lays out an enormous horizon and Nine Chains to the Moon is equivalent to a navigation across the world we live in: "What Is a House?", "Death and Life", "Longing Crosses the Sea", "Dollarability", "We Call it Earth", "Stomach Rhythms", "Ephemeralization"—from the microscopic to the automobile, to the house, to urbanity, to the image of the cosmos in constant movement. The title, said Fuller, is meant to stimulate open thinking: the 1938 world population, one person on the shoulders of another, will reach from the earth to the moon nine times!