Franz Schulze delves deeply into Johnson's life from his childhood - the only son of a wealthy Midwestern family - through his years at Harvard and his coming to terms with his sexuality, to his flirtation with the politics of Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and Hitler, to his decision at age thirty-four to become an architect, to his current position at the center of a circle of movers and shakers in the world of the arts.

Throughout, Franz Schulze draws on letters, writings, and speeches by Johnson, his family, his fellow architects, his contemporaries - both critical and friendly - and on the many interviews conducted while preparing this biography.