Lively, snapshot-like vignettes form an intimate, literary portrait of the infamously eccentric and influential modern architect Adolf Loos. Written by Loos’ third wife, the photographer Claire Beck (1904–1942), these often humorous, short episodes reveal Loos’ temperament and philosophy during the last years of his life (1928–1933). His irreverent personality and attitudes about post-Imperial Viennese society, the role of the craftsman, and the organic beauty of raw materials are brought to light. Included in The Private Adolf Loos are Claire's photographs of Loos, collected in museums, as well as informal snapshots of the two of them showing the whimsy and theatricality of this relationship between two artistic personalities—one as infamous as he was well-regarded, and one, a youthful accomplice and budding photographer who would also become Loos' intermediary, secretary and proxy. With this bricolage of short tales and its dark conclusion at the brink of death’s door, Claire shows herself to be one of Loos’ great champions and memorialists, despite his shortcoming and debilitations. This is not a book just about architecture, but rather a love story about the Modern revolution that provides a woman’s insight into one of its most radical personalities, set amid the fascinating cultural backdrop of 1920s and 1930s interwar Europe. • New insights gained into Loos projects through their creation stories: the unrealized black-and-white striped marble house for Josephine Baker (1928) with its dramatic lighting and view into the swimming pool, for example, or the interior of the Villa Müller (1928–30) in Prague with green marble imagined by Loos as a visual rhyme with shimmering fish. • Loos’ philosophy and his spatial modeling system of the Raumplan — open-space architecture conceived in three-dimensions — is taught in every architecture school. His name is instantly recognizable and suggests controversy, innovation, and intrigue. • Essays by Loos in the appendix give insight into how these controversies were established — by Loos himself, a provocateur and cultural critic. • The book reflects not just Claire’s experience but also the zeitgeist that brought this Modern master to the fore and benefitted from his radical vision. He advocated a "socialist" future where every proletariat, through architecture, could become a liberated sophisticate. • A traveling exhibition of the Western Bohemian Writers Society has introduced Claire and this book around Europe for the last two years, with several articles about her appearing in magazines with monthly circulations of 65,000-100,000. They are trying to get the show to London for 2020, which would create a natural market for this book. • During his lifetime Loos designed, built, and remodeled close to one hundred apartments and homes, and undertook a number of large civic projects like schools, government buildings, and workers’ housing. Dozens of additional works include sanatoriums, hotels, shops, cafés and bars — notably Vienna's American Bar, featuring colorful stained glass and a death-defying marble ceiling that has never fallen down. • While related to the hardcover edition, this is a streamlined version of that book geared to a larger market, with 40 illustrations, including unseen documents. Some photographs are by Claire, some are of the two