"I have not experienced the miracle of faith, but I have often known the miracle of ineffable space," Charles-Édouard Jeanneret — better known as Le Corbusier — once said. It's fitting that the design vision of this architect, writer, painter, sculptor, furniture maker, and sire of 20th-century modernism continues to be followed with an almost religious ardor long after his passing in 1965. Now comes a tower of a book titled Le Corbusier Le Grand (Phaidon; $200), including 2,000 images, renderings, journal entries, travel logs, letters, and documents, many previously unseen. "He sketched all the time, starting in his childhood," explains Nicholas Fox Weber, whose Corbu biography will be out in November. "He had a constant need to get things down on paper and retain the thrill of each visual experience." What luck for the reader, who is given a comprehensive pictorial bio of an otherwise elusive public figure known mainly by his round black-rim glasses and bow ties: from studies of his Immeubles-Villas (1922), originally scribbled on the back of a menu, to drawings of his close friend Josephine Baker. Raised in a provincial Swiss town, Le Corbusier relocated to Paris in 1917, where he adopted his pseudonym (he liked its resemblance to corbeau, the French word for crow, a bird he felt he personified). Corbu was tirelessly prolific (authoring 34 books, constructing 78 buildings, and designing roughly 305 projects), committed to new technology, and intent on architectural revolution — it's no wonder that his ideas continue to shape cities around the world.

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