A fascinating account of an iconoclastic scientific polymath and the lively collection of scientists who were his friends.
The remarkable life and times of Freeman Dyson, whose broad-ranging contributions to modern science included quantum physics, the exploration of space, genetic engineering and more.
Born in Britain in 1923, Dyson's career began in World War II. After graduating from Cambridge University with a degree in mathematics, he was assigned to Bomber Command Headquarters and tasked with analyzing the effectiveness of British raids on Germany. Schewe (Joint Quantum Institute/Univ. of Maryland; The Grid: A Journey Through the Heart of Our Electrified World, 2006) chronicles the evolution of Dyson's career, illuminating the scientific issues as they unfolded in terms comprehensible to lay readers. After the war, Dyson emigrated to the U.S. and connected with scientists who had been involved with the Manhattan Project and were now turning their attention back to fundamental questions in particle physics and quantum field theory. The hot topic of the day was quantum electrodynamics, and the two major contenders, Julian Schwinger and Richard Feynman, appeared to be at odds. It was Dyson's brilliant contribution that unified their theories. While this was the high point of Dyson's career, his major contributions continued. After several years at Cornell University, he was invited by Robert Oppenheimer to join Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, where he still works today. Although he joined the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament in 1980, Dyson also worked for the Pentagon as a technical consultant. While he was unwilling to collaborate actively with the author, Schewe nonetheless benefited from interviews with Dyson's friends and family.
A fascinating account of an iconoclastic scientific polymath and the lively collection of scientists who were his friends.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-312-64235-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2013
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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