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A Beautiful Mind: The Life of Mathematical Genius and Nobel Laureate John Nash
Stories of famously eccentric Princetonians abound--such as that of chemist Hubert Alyea, the model for The Absent-Minded Professor, or Ralph Nader, said to have had his own key to the library as an undergraduate Or the "Phantom of Fine Hall," a figure many students had seen shuffling around the corridors of the math and physics building wearing purple sneakers and writing numerology treatises on the blackboards. The Phantom was John Nash, one of the most brilliant mathematicians of his generation, who had spiraled into schizophrenia in the 1950s. His most important work had been in game theory, which by the 1980s was underpinning a large part of economics. When the Nobel Prize committee began debating a prize for game theory, Nash's name inevitably came up--only to be dismissed, since the prize clearly could not go to a madman. But in 1994 Nash, in remission from schizophrenia, shared the Nobel Prize in economics for work done some 45 years previously. Economist and journalist Sylvia Nasar has written a biography of Nash that looks at all sides of his life. She gives an intelligent, understandable exposition of his mathematical ideas and a picture of schizophrenia that is evocative but decidedly unromantic. Her story of the machinations behind Nash's Nobel is fascinating and one of very few such accounts available in print (the CIA could learn a thing or two from the Nobel committees). This highly recommended book is indeed "a story about the mystery of the human mind, in three acts: genius, madness, reawakening." --Mary Ellen Curtin.
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The Man Who Fed the World: Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Norman Borlaug and His Battle to End World Hunger
The Man Who Fed the World provides a loving and respectful portrait of one of America's greatest heroes. Nobel Peace Prize recipient for averting hunger and famine, Dr. Norman Borlang is credited with saving hundreds of millions of lives from starvation-more than any other person in history? Loved by millions around the world, Dr. Borlang is recognized as one of the most influential men of the twentieth century..
Price: $15.15
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The Impossible Takes Longer: The 1,000 Wisest Things Ever Said by Nobel Prize Laureates
Witty, incisive observations on such universally meaningful topics as courage and compassion by many of the greatest minds of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.Since 1901, the Nobel Prize has been the hallmark of genius, but Nobel laureates tend to be more than merely brilliant—their idealism, courage, and concern for humanity have also made them sources of inspiration and wisdom. Contrary to the notion that geniuses are absentminded eccentrics who lead solitary lives, many Nobel laureates have been social activists and political leaders, and some have been polymaths whose interests and talents were diverse, such as Philip Noel-Baker, winner of the 1959 Peace prize, who ran in three Olympic Games. The quotations—drawn from biographies, published articles, and speeches—are grouped by such themes as achievement, truth and falsehood, war and conflict, technology, and more. “The difficult is what takes a little time; the impossible is what takes a little longer,” said Fritjof Nansen, who personally repatriated more than 400,000 prisoners of war after World War I, and helped save millions of Russians from starvation. Albert Einstein prudently advised, “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts,” and Czeslaw Milosz warned, “In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot.” Most of the quotations have never been anthologized previously. There is a section of short biographical sketches of each of the roughly 250 laureates quoted in the book, a brief history of the Nobel Prize, and a complete list of every Nobel laureate through 2006. The Impossible Takes Longer is a remarkable assemblage of insightful, thought-provoking, sometimes humorous statements by some of the world’s wisest men and women. .
Price: $9.95
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The Lady: Aung San Suu Kyi: Nobel Laureate and Burma's Prisoner
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Ogden Nash: The Life and Work of America's Laureate of Light Verse
Candy / Is dandy / But liquor / Is quicker These inimitable lines could only have been written by Ogden Nash, the American nonpareil of light verse and one of the more remarkable figures in American letters. His keen grasp of human nature and a unique style of verse made him, in the mid-twentieth century, the most widely read and frequently quoted poet of his time. For years, readers have longed for a biography to match Nash's charm, wit, and good nature; now we have it in Douglas Parker's absorbing life of the poet. Mr. Parker has had exclusive access to family letters and diaries, and permission to quote liberally from them and from Nash's poems. He has written a warm and inviting biography of the poet who reveled in whimsy and wordplay, but who was applauded by his more serious contemporaries..
Price: $10.20
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Drinking with Bukowski: Recollections of the Poet Laureate of Skid Row
The 20th century's greatest poet was a guy from L.A. called Hank, who talked straight, drank hard, faced truth, and exposed beauty and vulnerability like no other in his place and time. Drinking with Bukowski is a celebration of that utterly original voice featuring contributions from everyone from the women who loved him to the Hollywood cognoscenti who courted him, from writers who admired him and actors who tried to emulate him to the barflies, strippers, gangsters, poets, crazies, and dreamers who knew him: Raymond Carver, Wanda Coleman, Harold Norse, Michael C. Ford, and Paul Vangelisti pay homage and recount the Dionysian days of L.A. poetry; record producer Harvey Robert Kubernik and journalist Barry Miles remember capturing Buk on vinyl for the first time; novelist Steve Abee remembers the early days of L.A.'s underground newspapers - Open City and the L.A. Free Press - Bukowski's early stomping grounds. .
Price: $6.98
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The Words of Peace: The Nobel Peace Prize Laureates of the Twentieth Century-Selections from Their Acceptance Speeches (Newmarket Words Of...)
A new hardcover gift edition featuring the appealing Picasso cover art and edited by the world's foremost historian of the Nobel Peace Prize—this inspiring collection contains excerpts from the acceptance speeches and lectures of eighty laureates since the award's inception in 1901. "Hope is the strongest driving force for a people. Hope which brings about change, which produces new realities, is what opens man's road to freedom."—Oscar Arias Sánchez, 1987 As President Jimmy Carter writes in his foreword, "Many of the heroes of peace who speak to us in these pages have spoken far more vibrantly in their deeds, motivated by this spirit. As we have found inspiration in their work for peace, so may we find inspiration in their 'Words of Peace.'" Mother Teresa, Albert Schweitzer, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Aung San Suu Kyi, Nelson Mandela, Eli Weisel, Yitzhak Rabin, and many more give significant perspectives on such themes as the Bonds of Humanity, Faith and Hope, the Tragedy of War, Violence and Nonviolence, Human Rights, Politics and Leadership, and of course, Peace..
Price: $8.79
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Master Mind: The Rise and Fall of Fritz Haber, the Nobel Laureate Who Launched the Age of Chemical Warfare
FRITZ HABER -- a Nobel laureate in chemistry, a friend of Albert Einstein, a German Jew and World War I hero -- may be the most important scientist you have never heard of. The Haber-Bosch process, which he invented at the turn of the twentieth century, revolutionized agriculture by converting nitrogen to fertilizer in quantities massive enough to feed the world. The invention has become an essential pillar for life on earth; some two billion people on our planet could not survive without it. Yet this same process supplied the German military with explosives during World War I, and Haber orchestrated Germany's use of an entirely new weapon -- poison gas. Eventually, Haber's efforts led to Zyklon B, the gas later used to kill millions -- including Haber's own relatives -- in Nazi concentration camps. Haber is the patron saint of guns and butter, a scientist whose discoveries transformed the way we produce food and fight wars. His legacy is filled with contradictions, as was his personality. For some, he was a benefactor of humanity and devoted friend. For others, he was a war criminal, possessed by raw ambition. An intellectual gunslinger, enamored of technical progress and driven by patriotic devotion to Germany, he was instrumental in the scientific work that inadvertently supported the Nazi cause; a Jew and a German patriot, he was at once an enabler of the Nazi regime and its victim. Master Mind is a thought-provoking biography of this controversial scientist, a modern Faust who personifies the paradox of science, its ability to create and to destroy. It offers a complete chronicle of his tumultuous and ultimately tragic life, from his childhood and rise to prominence in the heady days of the German Empire to his disgrace and exile at the hands of the Nazis; from early decades as the hero who eliminated the threat of starvation to his lingering legacy as a villain whose work led to the demise of millions. .
Price: $3.17
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Nobel Lectures: From the Literature Laureates, 1986 to 2006
Twenty-one of the world's greatest writers contemplate art and politics in a collection of both lyrical beauty and ethical depth."A writer's life is a highly vulnerable, almost naked activity....You find no shelter, no protection—unless you lie—in which case of course you have constructed your own protection and, it could be argued, become a politician."—Harold Pinter, from his Nobel lecture "Art, Truth And Politics" For over one hundred years writers from around the world have traveled to Stockholm, Sweden, on December 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death, to be awarded the prize bearing his name. From the political to the aesthetic, Nobel Lectures collects the words of a quarter century of these literature laureates, representing the inspirations, motivations, and passionately held beliefs of some of the greatest minds in the world of literature. From Harold Pinter's passionate and timely lecture on the nature of truth in art and politics to J.M. Coetzee's allegorical journey through the mysteries of the creative process; from Toni Morrison's essay on the link between language and oppression to Nadine Gordimer's meditation on the ways in which literature can shape the worlds of individual and collective being, this is a volume in which meditations on imagination and the process of writing mingle with keen discussions of global affairs, cultural change, and the ongoing influence of the past. Whatever genre the laureates write in, be it poetry, drama, or prose, and whatever their cultural or social background, Nobel Lectures is a testament to the power of literature to shape the world..
Price: $4.75
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