In a short account, Berlinski has wrought an astonishing synthesis—a sort of essential Newton for those not fearing to tread...
An exuberant, enlightening account of Newtonian mechanics by Princeton mathematician turned mystery novelist and essayist (The Body Shop, 1996, etc.).
Few, even among scholars, have actually read Newton’s Principia Mathematica, yet it is universally acclaimed as one of the pivotal works in modern science, reflecting the genius of its author, who was Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge (the chair now held by Stephen Hawking). Enter Berlinski, who takes the reader by the hand and, through simple diagrams and patient prose, unveils some of the mysteries embodied in the concepts of force, mass, acceleration, and velocity symbolized in Newton’s laws. To begin with, he tells us, it was Newton’s gift to take the coordinate system developed by Descartes (which allowed the visualization of algebraic equations as curves) literally to the limit: that is, to see the velocity of a moving particle at a given point on its curve of motion as the measure of the change in distance over the change in time as time approaches zero (the limit). Thus was born the derivative, as defined in the calculus that Newton (and Leibniz) invented. Berlinski moves on from there to capture the mental workings of Newton as he wrestled with the motion of the moon as it circles the earth, neither escaping into space nor plummeting earthward. He also explores Newton’s later work on optics. He makes no excuses for the eccentricities of his subject (the vicious attacks on Hooke and Leibniz, the ruthless persecutions of counterfeiters when Newton was Master of the Mint), and he dutifully records Newton’s religious defection (his disbelief in the Trinity) and his excursions into alchemy and Biblical genealogies. He also reports on the few emotional episodes in Newton’s life, including a two-year mutual attachment between the already rich and famous mathematician and a young Swiss colleague, which may or may not have gone beyond words.
In a short account, Berlinski has wrought an astonishing synthesis—a sort of essential Newton for those not fearing to tread in mathematical waters.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2000
ISBN: 0-684-84392-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2000
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
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
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