George Nelson (1908-1986) was a pioneering modernist who ranks with Raymond Loew y, Charles Eames, and Eliot Noyes as one of America's outstanding designers. Nel son's office produced some of the twentieth century's canonical pieces of indust rial design, many of which are still in production: the ball clock, the bubble l amp, the sling sofa. Nelson also made major contributions to the storage wall, t he shopping mall, the multi-media presentation, and the open-plan office system. The author of this definitive biography was given access to Nelson's office arc hives and personal papers. He also interviewed more than 70 of Nelson's friends, colleagues, employees, and clients (including the late D. J. De Pree, former he ad of the Herman Miller Furniture Company and Nelson's chief patron) and obtaine d many previously unpublished images from corporate and private archives.The ful l range of Nelson's work is represented, from product and furniture design to pa ckaging and graphics to large-scale projects such as the Fairchild house and the 1959 American National Exhibition in Moscow. Because Nelson was a serious and o riginal thinker about design issues, Abercrombie quotes extensively from his pub lished and unpublished writings, offering provocative new material to students o f design theory and philosophy.The appendixes, compiled by Judith Nasatir, inclu de a chronology of Nelson's work, a biographical chronology, and two bibliograph ies: one of writings by Nelson and the other of writings about him.