Nothing seems beyond Fara’s grasp in her scholarly examination of apples and alchemy, physics and fame, public relations and...
Fascinating if sometimes dense study describing how Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727) came to be regarded as the world’s first scientific genius.
The word “scientist” did not even exist until 100 years after Newton’s death, notes Fara (History and Philosophy of Science/Cambridge); he was known during his lifetime not so much for the laws of motion and optics as for his expertise on biblical chronologies (to him we owe the current obsession of Satanists with the number 666) and on the voyage of Jason and the Argonauts. The author sketches what details we have concerning Newton’s life (no one knows for certain when he was born) and describes his most enduring achievement: demonstrating that bodies in the heavens obey the same physical laws as those on earth. Informing us that there is no way to verify the falling-apple story, Fara moves on to examine the images of Newton in paintings, etchings, and sculptures during and after his life. She also assesses his popularizers—including the adventurous folks who published the fashionable book Newton for the Ladies—and explores the rivalry between Newton and Leibniz, noting the irony that the latter is remembered as a philosopher rather than as the formidable mathematician he was. Meanwhile, throughout this engaging text, she displays an easy familiarity with arts and letters as well as with the relevant scientific literature. Most interesting of all are Fara’s discussions of the evolving notion of “genius.” She notes with amusement the thin line between “genius” and “insanity,” then discusses how the mantle of “genius” has passed from Newton to Einstein to Hawking and reveals that at a 1998 auction a first edition of Newton’s Principia (1687) went for nearly £2 million.
Nothing seems beyond Fara’s grasp in her scholarly examination of apples and alchemy, physics and fame, public relations and reputation. (41 illustrations)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-231-12806-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Columbia Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2002
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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