Sometimes clumsily written, but an interesting look at the human element in science.
A solid account of some memorable squabbles reminds readers that scientists are as prone to turf wars and ego trips as any other mortals.
British author White, whose credits include biographies of Newton, Darwin, and Einstein, begins with a quick overview of early scientific controversies, in particular the conflict between astronomers and the Catholic Church. He then examines eight particular rivalries. Newton, who quarreled with anyone who questioned his preeminence, saved his greatest venom for Leibnitz, who seems to have discovered calculus at almost the same time as his English rival. In the long run, Leibnitz’s clearer notation became the standard. The chemists Lavoisier and Priestly backed rival theories of combustion. Priestly actually discovered oxygen, but insisted on interpreting it in terms of the outmoded phlogiston theory. It was the Frenchman’s broader (and ultimately, correct) theories that led to the development of chemistry as an exact science. Similarly, Darwin’s opponents, most of whom opposed evolution on religious rather than scientific grounds, lost the argument mainly because their theoretical position was in effect a dead end for the biological sciences. Sometimes being right isn’t enough; Tesla won his argument (as hotly contested as any) with Edison over the choice between alternating and direct current for distribution of electricity, but his complete lack of worldly acumen made him a marginal figure. In modern times, White also looks at the races to build the nuclear bomb and to find the structure of DNA, as well as the ongoing commercial competition between Bill Gates and his rivals. In each case, he looks on the bright side, making the argument that competition spurs progress and forces the scientists involved to work at their best.
Sometimes clumsily written, but an interesting look at the human element in science.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-380-97754-0
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2001
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
