A fascinating portrait of a complex figure who ponders the place of man and God in the universe and who still loves the...
Ferguson (Pythagoras, 2010, etc.) brilliantly updates her 1991 children's biography of Stephen Hawking for an adult audience.
Hawking's work on black holes and the origins of the universe guarantees him a place in the scientific pantheon, but his ability to pursue scientific work despite the ravages of ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease) have earned him superstar status. Diagnosed in 1962 with a prognosis that he would be dead within two years, he refused to be daunted. He continued his studies, married and fathered three children and made major contributions to our understanding of the universe, all while struggling to maintain his ability to function despite increasing muscular atrophy that prevented his use of his hands, confined him to a wheel chair and ultimately robbed him of his ability to speak. In 1979, he was appointed Lucasian Professor at Cambridge, the chair once held by Isaac Newton. Now almost 70 and only able to communicate through a computer, he still maintains a busy lecture schedule. His latest book, The Grand Design (co-authored by Leonard Mlodinow), was published in 2010. Ferguson has relied on Hawking for guidance on scientific topics and on a memoir written by his ex-wife for details of life during their 25-year marriage. Her ability to write clearly about scientific issues using metaphor rather than mathematics makes this an excellent introduction to astrophysics for the interested layman.
A fascinating portrait of a complex figure who ponders the place of man and God in the universe and who still loves the “Eureka moment of discovering something that no one knew before.”Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-230-34060-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2011
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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