![R. Buckminster Fuller, left, with students in Carbondale in 1971. Then a professor at Southern Illinois University, his office was just off campus. A new biography reports](/images/uploads/_small/1971-02-02-Buckminster-Fuller-SIU-Carbondale-via-AP-Jim-Palmer.jpeg)
Best of: ‘Inventor of the Future’ sketches complicated portrait of Buckminster Fuller
R. Buckminster Fuller was a visionary designer, inventor, and futurist who is now the subject of a new biography, Inventor of the Future: The Visionary Life of Buckminster Fuller, by an Illinois-based writer.