An outstanding biography of a man of incomprehensible brilliance.
One of the great geniuses of the 20th century, barely known outside academia today, receives a much-needed expert biographical treatment.
Regarding his subject, Kurt Gödel (1906-1978), Budiansky writes, “Einstein had called him ‘the greatest logician since Aristotle,’ and even in Princeton, that town with more Nobel Prize winners than traffic lights, his otherworldly genius had stood out.” Born to a prosperous family in Austria-Hungary, Gödel was brilliant from the start. He entered the University of Vienna in 1924 to study physics but became attracted to mathematics and philosophy. During the 1920s, Vienna was a world center for both disciplines, and Gödel’s talents were quickly recognized. Many readers are unaware that nothing in science is proven. The law of gravity states that things fall down only because things always fall down. No proof exists that they can’t fall up. Only mathematics produces absolute proofs. Mathematicians find this deeply satisfying, but they are still recovering from the shock of Gödel’s great discovery, in the early 1930s, that many systems in mathematics, while true, can’t be proven. Although a historic milestone, it’s an exceedingly difficult concept; readers with some background in college mathematics will be best-suited to comprehending the author’s explanations. Fortunately, Budiansky writes so well that this is no problem. Although Gödel remains the focus of this terrific book, the author delivers insightful portraits of a score of brilliant men and women, almost all German or Austrian, descriptions of their work and academic struggles in early-20th-century Europe, and their lives after Hitler destroyed German science. Many moved to the U.S., where they encountered a land of Eden, especially Princeton, “a picturesque pre-Revolutionary village attached to the university campus.” Barely escaping Vienna in 1940, Gödel settled at the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, became a close friend of Einstein, and continued groundbreaking work despite increasing periods of obsession and paranoid delusion, which eventually led to his death via slow starvation.
An outstanding biography of a man of incomprehensible brilliance.Pub Date: May 11, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-324-00544-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.
The former iCarly star reflects on her difficult childhood.
In her debut memoir, titled after her 2020 one-woman show, singer and actor McCurdy (b. 1992) reveals the raw details of what she describes as years of emotional abuse at the hands of her demanding, emotionally unstable stage mom, Debra. Born in Los Angeles, the author, along with three older brothers, grew up in a home controlled by her mother. When McCurdy was 3, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Though she initially survived, the disease’s recurrence would ultimately take her life when the author was 21. McCurdy candidly reconstructs those in-between years, showing how “my mom emotionally, mentally, and physically abused me in ways that will forever impact me.” Insistent on molding her only daughter into “Mommy’s little actress,” Debra shuffled her to auditions beginning at age 6. As she matured and starting booking acting gigs, McCurdy remained “desperate to impress Mom,” while Debra became increasingly obsessive about her daughter’s physical appearance. She tinted her daughter’s eyelashes, whitened her teeth, enforced a tightly monitored regimen of “calorie restriction,” and performed regular genital exams on her as a teenager. Eventually, the author grew understandably resentful and tried to distance herself from her mother. As a young celebrity, however, McCurdy became vulnerable to eating disorders, alcohol addiction, self-loathing, and unstable relationships. Throughout the book, she honestly portrays Debra’s cruel perfectionist personality and abusive behavior patterns, showing a woman who could get enraged by everything from crooked eyeliner to spilled milk. At the same time, McCurdy exhibits compassion for her deeply flawed mother. Late in the book, she shares a crushing secret her father revealed to her as an adult. While McCurdy didn’t emerge from her childhood unscathed, she’s managed to spin her harrowing experience into a sold-out stage act and achieve a form of catharsis that puts her mind, body, and acting career at peace.
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982185-82-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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