A monster story, in the voices of those who knew and loved the monster.
Quick digression: Every pedant loves to say that "Frankenstein," contrary to popular belief, is not the monster; Frankenstein is the *scientist* who *made* the monster. But of course, Shelley's novel reveals that Dr. Frankenstein *is* the real monster: it's his careless act of creation that's monstrous, not the poor suffering thing who was thereby created.
Anyway, back to Labatut's book: here, the creature is artificial intelligence, or the computer itself, or maybe our whole mad digital age -- and the monster who birthed it is a real historical mathematician.
From the author of When We Cease to Understand the World: a dazzling, kaleidoscopic book about the destructive chaos lurking in the history of computing and AIJohnny von Neumann was an enigma. As a young man, he stunned those around him with his monomaniacal pursuit of the unshakeable foundations of mathematics. But when his faith in this all-encompassing system crumbled, he began to put his prodigious intellect to use for those in power. As he designed unfathomable computer systems and aided the development of the atomic bomb, his work pushed increasingly into areas that were beyond human comprehension and control…
In The Summer Book Tove Jansson distills the essence of the summer—its sunlight and storms—into twenty-two crystalline vignettes. This brief novel tells the story of Sophia, a six-year-old girl awakening to existence, and Sophia’s grandmother, nearing the end of hers, as they spend the summer on a tiny unspoiled island in the Gulf of Finland. The grandmother is unsentimental and wise, if a little cranky; Sophia is impetuous and volatile, but she tends to her grandmother with the care of a new parent. Together they amble over coastline and forest in easy companionship, build boats from bark, create a miniature…
Odd-couple friendship of surfing and politics. David is funny and wise, and (in different ways) so is his brother-in-law Matt, and it's a pleasure to spend a few hundred pages in their company.
* A GOODREADS MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF SUMMER 2025 * A TOWN & COUNTRY BEST BOOK OF SUMMER 2025 *
A former Obama speechwriter moves to the Jersey Shore and learns to surf with the help of his brother-in-law: a tattooed, truck-driving Joe Rogan superfan.
David, the Yale-educated writer with a fear of sharks, and Matt, the daredevil electrician with a shed full of surfboards, had never been close. But as America's crises piled up and David spiraled into existential dread, he noticed that his brother-in-law was thriving. He began to suspect Matt's favorite hobby had something to do with…
From lottery tickets to the night sky to the thickness of elephants' legs, this is a book of silly, true, cartoon-illustrated stories about mathematical ideas -- and why they matter.
