Book cover of Alan Turing's Manchester

Book description

Manchester is proud of Alan Turing but does it deserve to be? Dr Jonathan Swinton explores the complexity of the city that Alan Turing encountered in 1948. He goes well beyond Turing as a mathematician, to cover wire-women, Wittgenstein and the daisy. This is a richly illustrated account of lives…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Alan Turing's Manchester as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

My first pick is the one most directly about Alan Turing himself. After 1950 his attention turned mainly to his new theory of mathematical biology, but his death in 1954 left most of this work unpublished.  His ideas were 20 or more years ahead of their time and few people could assess them. Jonathan Swinton is a leading expert in this field, and has been studying Turing’s manuscripts for 30 years. But his book has a much broader range: he adds so much on the culture of Manchester and its region, with a particular focus on women both as protagonists…

From Andrew's list on Alan Turing’s world.

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Book cover of These Blue Mountains

These Blue Mountains by Sarah Loudin Thomas,

A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.

German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…

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