A good summary of an important era in science and one of its underrated stars.
Everyone knows about Foucault’s pendulum, but who knows anything about the man himself?
Mathematician Aczel (The Riddle of the Compass, 2001, etc.) offers a corrective with the story of Léon Foucault (1819–68), whose famous experiment gave the first proof of Earth’s rotation. Aczel begins in 1851, when Foucault set up a pendulum in the cellar of the house he shared with his mother, then jumps back to establish a historical framework. The medieval church adopted the Ptolemaic theory of the cosmos because it agreed with biblical texts implying that Earth is the unmoving center of the universe. When Copernicus and later scientists challenged Ptolemy’s theory, one rejoinder was that no one could detect the Earth’s rotation. Aczel summarizes the arguments up until the 19th century, then switches to Foucault’s early years. The son of a Parisian publisher, Léon suffered from poor health. He left medical school because the sight of blood sickened him, but his professors encouraged him to apply his talents to research, and he became a consummate scientific generalist. Foucault made the first photographs of microscopic objects and of the sun through a telescope. Later, he measured the speed of light with high accuracy. But his lack of formal scientific training held him back. For years he worked as science reporter for a prominent daily newspaper, and even after his 1851 pendulum experiment he fought for recognition. His prime ally was Napoleon III, science-loving Emperor of France, who secured for Foucault the honors the scientific establishment had refused him, including a Ph.D. and membership in the Academy of Science shortly before his premature death. Aczel effectively uses Foucault’s story to provide a vivid panorama of Second Empire Paris, although occasionally the transitions are a bit rough.
A good summary of an important era in science and one of its underrated stars.Pub Date: Aug. 19, 2003
ISBN: 0-7434-6478-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered...
The incredible true story of three Jewish women who survived the Holocaust.
Priska, Rachel, and Anka were married Jewish women in their early 20s when the Nazis took control of Europe. Like millions of other Jews, they were forced to give up their normal lives, all of their belongings, and their homes. Shuttled into ghettos and then off to one of the most notorious camps, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, they suffered through the Nazis’ increasing atrocities. But these three women all held a secret: they were pregnant. They were moved from Auschwitz and ended up in Mauthausen, another notorious death camp. With facing the most horrible conditions imaginable, all three gave birth right before the Allies accepted Germany’s surrender. In this meticulously detailed account, Holden (Haatchi & Little B: The Inspiring True Story of One Boy and His Dog, 2014, etc.) compiles an enormous amount of information from interviews, letters, historical records, and personal visits to the sites where this story unfolded. The graphic history places readers in the moment and provides a sense of the enduring power of love that Priska, Rachel, and Anka had for their unborn children and for the husbands they so desperately hoped to see after the war. Even though it occurred more than 70 years ago, the story’s truth is so chillingly portrayed that it seems as if it could have happened recently. These three women and their infants survived in the face of death, and, Holden writes, “their babies went on to have babies of their own and create a second and then a third generation, all of whom continue to live their lives in defiance of Hitler’s plan to erase them from history and from memory.”
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered through at the hands of the Nazis.Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-237025-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2015
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