A fine biography of a man who played an essential role in post–World War II American science and deserves to be better known.
The life and work of “an expert in technology” who is largely forgotten outside the world of physics.
Richard Garwin (b. 1928) was Enrico Fermi’s favorite student, and he worked with theoretical physicist Edward Teller and played a central role in developing the hydrogen bomb at Los Alamos. A brilliant experimenter and inventor, he made important contributions to physics but never won a Nobel Prize or created controversy, so few beyond the scientific community have honored him. Science writer Shurkin (Broken Genius: The Rise and Fall of William Shockley, Creator of the Electronic Age, 2006, etc.) will probably not change matters, but readers will enjoy his compelling biography of an extraordinarily talented scientist. A prodigy from childhood, Garwin was a 23-year-old with a doctorate when, assigned by Teller, he designed the first workable model for a fusion device. Teller spent his life in a successful battle to take credit for the H-bomb; consequently, except among colleagues, Garwin’s work was unknown. In his definitive account of the H-bomb, Dark Sun (1995), Richard Rhodes “missed it because no one told him about it.” Even Shurkin, a skilled writer, strains to explain Garwin’s promotion of the mathematical algorithm called the Fast Fourier Transform, now “a common tool in virtually every aspect of science and technology.” Readers will have no trouble recognizing the laser printer, GPS, touch screen, and virtual reality helmet, developed during Garwin’s long career at IBM (the latter two were rejected by superiors but smash hits for rival companies a generation later). By the 1960s, he was a valued science consultant to presidents, regularly telling them what they didn’t want to hear and, despite his H-bomb history, working to promote disarmament.
A fine biography of a man who played an essential role in post–World War II American science and deserves to be better known.Pub Date: Feb. 21, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-63388-223-2
Page Count: 340
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
Graceful and deeply felt.
A collection of personal pieces, combined into an affecting memoir by longtime New Yorker editor Angell.
The author, a noted baseball writer (A Pitcher’s Story, 2001, etc.), has many intimate connections to the magazine Gardner Botsford once dubbed “The Comic Weekly,” in which most of these reminiscences originally appeared. His mother, Katherine, was the New Yorker’s fiction editor; years later, Angell held her former job—and occupied her office. His stepfather, E.B. White, was the magazine’s most important contributor during its most influential years. The memoir mostly concerns New Yorker colleagues and other remarkable people who have been a part of the author’s life. His father, lawyer Ernest Angell, lost Katherine to the younger White but over the years became a figure of immense importance to Roger. Angell loved his mother, loved White, loved his first wife (not much here about the cause of their 1960s divorce), loved his coworkers, loved his job. His portraits are really tributes, whether of the well-known William Maxwell, V.S. Pritchett, Harold Ross or William Shawn, or the lesser-known Botsford and Emily Hahn. Angell offers some New Yorker–insider tidbits (Ian Frazier mimicked Shawn’s voice so well that he could fool colleagues over the phone) and a bit more than you want to know about some of his aunts, one of whom wrote a book about Willa Cather. A dazzling story-within-a-story describes a 1940 round of golf with a mysterious woman who lost a valuable ring. The author seems uncertain how an iPod works but reveals an expertise with machine guns. His fickle memory frustrates and bemuses him. Sometimes he can recall only sensory images; sometimes the story unreeling in his mind skips, stops, fades, dissolves into something else. In several of his most appealing passages, he writes about the fictions that memory fashions.
Graceful and deeply felt.Pub Date: May 8, 2006
ISBN: 0-15-101350-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2006
IN THE NEWS
A slim volume packed with nourishing nuggets of wisdom.
Life lessons from the celebrated poet.
Angelou (A Song Flung Up to Heaven, 2002, etc.) doesn’t have a daughter, per se, but “thousands of daughters,” multitudes that she gathers here in a Whitmanesque embrace to deliver her experiences. They come in the shape of memories and poems, tools that readers can fashion to their needs. “Believing that life loves the liver of it, I have dared to try many things,” she writes, proceeding to recount pungent moments, stories in which her behavior sometimes backfired, and sometimes surprised even herself. Much of it is framed by the “struggle against a condition of surrender” or submission. She refuses to preach or consider her personal insights as generalized edicts. She is reminded of the charity that words and gestures bring and the liberation that comes with honesty. Lies, she notes, often spring out of fear. She cheated madness by counting her blessings. She is enlivened by those in love. She understands the uses and abuses of violence. Occasionally a bit of old-fashioned advice filters in, as during a commencement address/poem in which she urges the graduates to make a difference, to be present and accountable. The topics are mostly big, raw and exposed. Where is death’s sting? “It is here in my heart.” Overarching each brief chapter is the vital energy of a woman taking life’s measure with every step.
A slim volume packed with nourishing nuggets of wisdom.Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6612-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2008
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