Mr. Nitze relied on a customizable set of prefabricated building blocks called an itHouse.

WSJ: The Do-It-Yourself Desert Retreat

Ms. Taalman's cost-minimizing, uber-functionalist design means Mr. Nitze's home lacks (and doesn't require) drywall.

WSJ: The Do-It-Yourself Desert Retreat

Mr. Nitze stopped watching TV six years ago, but he gets Internet through a small antenna affixed to his roof.

WSJ: The Do-It-Yourself Desert Retreat

Nitze School for Advanced International Affairs, at Johns Hopkins, whom Wolfowitz hired as a part-time consultant to the bank, told me.

NEWYORKER: The Next Crusade

To say that Mr. Nitze lives off the grid is an understatement.

WSJ: The Do-It-Yourself Desert Retreat

Yet Mr. Nitze's home shows little trace of an amateur's touch.

WSJ: The Do-It-Yourself Desert Retreat

While there are few human neighbors, bobcats are regularly seen as are rattlesnakes, says Mr. Nitze, who says living here has changed him for the better.

WSJ: The Do-It-Yourself Desert Retreat

This is especially true insofar as you have provided me the opportunity to do so in the company of two distinguished former colleagues and authorities in the field, Ambassadors Paul Nitze and Max Kampleman.

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: US-Soviet Relations

Nitze School of Advanced International Studies.

UN: Secretary-General

Today, when he's not in Los Angeles, Mr. Nitze, 41, lives three hours away on an entirely different type of frontier: on the outer edge of civilization north from Palm Springs, off a 1-mile-long dirt road in the remote, rocky high desert of Southern California.

WSJ: The Do-It-Yourself Desert Retreat