
American computer scientist and mathematician (born 1938)
One of the most highly regarded novels of 1986, Vikram Seth's story in verse made him a literary household name in both the United States and India.John Brown, a successful yuppie living in 1980s San Francisco meets a romantic interest in Liz, after placing a personal ad in the newspaper. From this interaction, John meets a variety of characters, each with their own values and ideas of "self-actualization." However, Liz begins to fall in love with John's best friend, and John realizes his journey of self-discovery has only just begun.
Marjorie Morningstar is a love story. It presents one of the greatest characters in modern Marjorie, the pretty 17-year-old who left the respectability of New York's Central Park West to join the theater, live in the teeming streets of Greenwich Village, and seek love in the arms of a brilliant, enigmatic writer.28 hours and 26 minutes
by Jimmy Carter
Rating: 3.2 ⭐
• 2 recommendations ❤️
The first work of fiction by a President of the United States -- a sweeping novel of the American South and the War of Independence In his ambitious and deeply rewarding novel, Jimmy Carter brings to life the Revolutionary War as it was fought in the Deep South; it is a saga that will change the way we think about the conflict. He reminds us that much of the fight for independence took place in that region and that it was a struggle of both great and small battles and of terrible brutality, with neighbor turned against neighbor, the Indians' support sought by both sides, and no quarter asked or given. The Hornet's Nest follows a cast of characters and their loved ones on both sides of this violent conflict -- including some who are based on the author's ancestors. At the heart of the story is Ethan Pratt, who in 1766 moves with his wife, Epsey, from Philadelphia to North Carolina and then to Georgia in 1771, in the company of Quakers. On their homesteads in Georgia, Ethan and his wife form a friendship with neighbors Kindred Morris and his wife, Mavis. Through Kindred and his young Indian friend Newota, Ethan learns about the frontier and the Native American tribes who are being continually pressed farther inland by settlers. As the eight-year war develops, Ethan and Kindred find themselves in life-and-death combat with opposing forces. With its moving love story, vivid action, and the suspense of a war fought with increasing ferocity and stealth, The Hornet's Nest is historical fiction at its best, in the tradition of such major classics as The Last of the Mohicans.
In this readable autobiography by the authors of The Story of Civilization, Will & Ariel Durant celebrate & examine a lifetime of ideas, friendships, triumphs & love. The story of their life together, rich in anecdotes & with the countless famous people they knew, is a passionate record of their shared experience as lovers, as spouses, as world travelers & as the authors of one of the most famous successful works of scholarship in American literary history. Ariel & Will met & fell in love in 1912. He taught at New York's anarchist Ferrer Center, a young man already in love with the world of ideas, who had quit seminary to his family's chagrin in search of freedom. She was 14, so young that she roller-skated on her way to City Hall for her marriage, the daughter of penniless immigrants struggling to survive in the New World, inheritor of all the rebellious traditions & the determination to survive of the Russian ghetto from which her family came. Together they shared not only a burning love for each other but a hunger for ideas. Their book follows their intellectual journey, beginning with their interest in anarchism (which brought them close to Emma Goldman & Alexander Berkman) & going on thru a long, shared lifetime that brought them honors, fame & acquaintance with almost every major literary & intellectual personality in Europe & the USA. Their book is frank & moving, at once a star-studded history of the decades thru which they lived & worked & an intimate tribute to an enduring love.
When Harriet Vane attends her Oxford reunion, known as the Gaudy, the prim academic setting is haunted by a rash of bizarre pranks: scrawled obscenities, burnt effigies, and poison-pen letters, including one that says, "Ask your boyfriend with the title if he likes arsenic in his soup." Some of the notes threaten murder; all are perfectly ghastly; yet in spite of their scurrilous nature, all are perfectly worded. And Harriet finds herself ensnared in a nightmare of romance and terror, with only the tiniest shreds of clues to challenge her powers of detection, and those of her paramour, Lord Peter Wimsey.
Ibn Battutah was just 21 when he set out in 1325 from his native Tangier on a pilgrimage to Mecca. He did not return to Morocco for another 29 years, traveling instead through more than 40 countries on the modern map, covering 75,000 miles and getting as far north as the Volga, as far east as China, and as far south as Tanzania. He wrote of his travels, and comes across as a superb ethnographer, biographer, anecdotal historian, and occasional botanist and gastronome. With this edition by Mackintosh-Smith, Battuta's Travels takes its place alongside other indestructible masterpieces of the travel-writing genre.
The striking seventh novel in the Martin Beck mystery series by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, finds Beck facing one of the greatest challenges in his professional career.The gruesome murder of a police captain in his hospital room reveals the unsavory history of a man who spent forty years practicing a horrible blend of strong-arm police work and shear brutality. Martin Beck and his colleagues feverishly comb Stockholm for the murderer, a demented and deadly rifleman, who has plans for even more chaos. As the tension builds and a feeling of imminent danger grips Beck, his investigation unearths evidence of police corruption. That’s when an even stronger sense of responsibility and something like shame urge him into taking a series of drastic steps, which lead to a shocking disaster.
Leon Uris retums to the land of his acclaimed best-seller Exodus for an epic story of hate and love, vengeance and forgiveness and forgiveness. The Middle East is the powerful setting for this sweeping tale of a land where revenge is sacred and hatred noble. Where an Arab ruler tries to save his people from destruction but cannot save them from themselves. When violence spreads like a plague across the lands of Palestine--this is the time of The Haj.
An ingenious tour de force: an utterly compelling historical mystery with a plot that twists and turns and keeps the reader guessing until the very last page.We are in England in the 1660s. Charles II has been restored to the throne following years of civil war and Cromwell's short-lived republic. Oxford is the intellectual seat of the country, a place of great scientific, religious, and political ferment. A fellow of New College is found dead in suspicious circumstances. A young woman is accused of his murder. We hear the story of the death from four witnesses: an Italian physician intent on claiming credit for the invention of blood transfusion; the son of an alleged Royalist traitor; a master cryptographer who has worked for both Cromwell and the king; and a renowned Oxford antiquarian. Each tells his own version of what happened. Only one reveals the extraordinary truth.With rights sold for record-breaking sums around the world, An Instance of the Fingerpost is destined to become a major international publishing event. Deserving of comparison to the works of John Fowles and Umberto Eco, Iain Pears's novel is an ingenious tour de force: an utterly compelling historical mystery with a plot that twists and turns and keeps the reader guessing until the very last page.
Soon to be a major motion picture, the story of one of the most improbable and productive collaborations ever chronicled, between a young unschooled Indian prodigy and a great English mathematician.In 1913, a young unschooled Indian clerk wrote a letter to G H Hardy, begging the preeminent English mathematician's opinion on several ideas he had about numbers. Realizing the letter was the work of a genius, Hardy arranged for Srinivasa Ramanujan to come to England. Thus began one of the most improbable and productive collaborations ever chronicled. With a passion for rich and evocative detail, Robert Kanigel takes us from the temples and slums of Madras to the courts and chapels of Cambridge University, where the devout Hindu Ramanujan, "the Prince of Intuition," tested his brilliant theories alongside the sophisticated and eccentric Hardy, "the Apostle of Proof." In time, Ramanujan's creative intensity took its toll: he died at the age of thirty-two and left behind a magical and inspired legacy that is still being plumbed for its secrets today.
by Harold McGee
Rating: 4.3 ⭐
• 6 recommendations ❤️
This is the completely revised and updated version of the hardcover in paperback for the first time in this books 20 year history.
Book by Katchadourian, Stina
by Jon Stewart
Rating: 4.1 ⭐
• 2 recommendations ❤️
For everyone who was too cheap to buy the hardcover, the blockbuster, award-winning #1 New York Times bestseller is now in trade paperback-with a new introduction, fully updated, and with equally unsettling nude photos of the newest Supreme Court justices, and a text corrected by the most reputable college professor we could find/afford.Jon Stewart, host of the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning The Daily Show , and his coterie of patriots deliver a hilarious look at American government . . . Termed a "political king-maker" by Newsweek, and "the Dan Rather of infotainment" by Vanity Fair, Jon Stewart, along with the writers of The Daily Show , combines his riotous wit and razor-sharp insight in this hilarious book. American-style democracy is the world's most beloved form of government, which explains why so many other nations are eager for us to impose it on them, but what is it exactly?In America (The Book) , Jon Stewart and The Daily Show writing staff offer their insights into our unique system of government, dissecting its institutions, explaining its history and processes, and exploring the reasons why concepts like "One man, one vote," "Government by the people," and "Every vote counts" have become such popular urban myths.
At the center of Mountains Beyond Mountains stands Paul Farmer. Doctor, Harvard professor, renowned infectious-disease specialist, anthropologist, the recipient of a MacArthur "genius" grant, world-class Robin Hood, Farmer was brought up in a bus and on a boat, and in medical school found his life’s to diagnose and cure infectious diseases and to bring the lifesaving tools of modern medicine to those who need them most.Mountains Beyond Mountains takes us from Harvard to Haiti, Peru, Cuba, and Russia as Farmer changes minds and practices through his dedication to the philosophy that "the only real nation is humanity"—a philosophy that is embodied in the small public charity he founded, Partners in Health. He enlists the help of the Gates Foundation, George Soros, the U.N.’s World Health Organization, and others in his quest to cure the world. At the heart of this book is the example of a life based on hope, and on an understanding of the truth of the Haitian proverb "Beyond mountains there are mountains": as you solve one problem, another problem presents itself, and so you go on and try to solve that one too.
This marvellous book is one of the most ingenious works of modern fiction, an entire microcosm brought to life in a Paris apartment block. Serge Valene wants to create an elaborate painting of the building he has made his home for the last sixty years. As he plans his picture, he contemplates the lives of all the people he has ever known there. Chapter by chapter, the narrative moves around the building revealing a marvellously diverse cast of characters in a series of ever more unlikely tales, which range from an avenging murderer to an eccentric English millionaire who has devised the ultimate past-time...
Sixteen stories deal with a grieving widower, murder, revenge, and a jealous wife
In the aftermath of a murder at a city museum, Norman de Ratour, a self-effacing secretary and fastidious sleuth, begins an investigation and uncovers a cannibal cult in the anthropology section and eugenics in the genetics lab. IP.
From one of the most distinguished writers in American crime fiction - her most brilliant and daring novel yet. This is a story of secrets and betrayals that stretch across four generations-secrets political, social, sexual, financial: all of them with the power to kill. Eager for something physical to do in the spirit-exhausting wake of 9/11, V.I. accepts a request from an old client to check up on an empty family mansion; sub-sequently surprises an intruder in the dark; and, giving chase, topples into a pond. Grasping for something to hold on to, her fingers close around a lifeless human hand. It is the body of a reporter who had been investigating events of forty-five years earlier, during the McCarthy era, and V.I.'s discovery quickly sucks her into the history of two great Chicago families-their fortunes intertwined by blood, sex, money, and the scandals that may or may not have resulted in murder all these years later. At the same time, she inadvertently becomes involved in the story of a missing Egyptian boy whose possible terrorist connections make him very much sought after by the government. As the two cases drive her forward-and then shockingly tumble together-she finds that wealth and privilege, too, bear a terrible price; and the past has no monopoly on patriotic scoundrels. Before everything is over, at least two more people will lie dead . . . and V.I. might even be one of them. A novel as passionate, complex, and powerfully entertaining as its acclaimed heroine, Blacklist is a stunning achievement.
The world's biggest supercollider, locked in an Arizona mountain, was built to reveal the secrets of the very moment of creation: the Big Bang itself.The Torus is the most expensive machine ever created by humankind, run by the world's most powerful supercomputer. It is the brainchild of Nobel Laureate William North Hazelius. Will the Torus divulge the mysteries of the creation of the universe? Or will it, as some predict, suck the earth into a mini black hole? Or is the Torus a Satanic attempt, as a powerful televangelist decries, to challenge God Almighty on the very throne of Heaven?Twelve scientists under the leadership of Hazelius are sent to the remote mountain to turn it on, and what they discover must be hidden from the world at all costs. Wyman Ford, ex-monk and CIA operative, is tapped to wrest their secret, a secret that will either destroy the world…or save it.The countdown begins…
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERRichard physicist . . . Nobel winner . . . bestselling author . . . safe-cracker.In this substantial graphic novel biography, First Second presents the larger-than-life exploits of Nobel-winning quantum physicist, adventurer, musician, world-class raconteur, and one of the greatest minds of the twentieth Richard Feynman. Written by nonfiction comics mainstay Jim Ottaviani and brilliantly illustrated by First Second author Leland Myrick, Feynman tells the story of the great man's life from his childhood in Long Island to his work on the Manhattan Project and the Challenger disaster. Ottaviani tackles the bad with the good, leaving the reader delighted by Feynman's exuberant life and staggered at the loss humanity suffered with his death.Anyone who ever wanted to know more about Richard P. Feynman, quantum electrodynamics, the fine art of the bongo drums, the outrageously obscure nation of Tuva, or the development and popularization of the field of physics in the United States need look no further than this rich and joyful work.One of School Library Journal 's Best Adult Books 4 Teens titles of 2011One of Horn Book 's Best Nonfiction Books of 2011
As if I’ve come to some lovely new my dazed eyes alit in awe; my capacity for alive lucidity developed in a mere minute to be purely moved in a dedicated anatomy Nufer avowed in a literary mode.Ava FedorovLifeline Rule's a very nicely devised, original tales of a delicate nature salute fine, wary humility before set executive-like power. A line tined, a rare body, finely divided, amuses even an irate cynic. Acute but agile, secure but arid, it iterates a syrupy, wide core. Definitively pawed open (amused or even elated), it is upon a total anatomy—careful, icily solid—it emanates a pure tone, like we get in a rosy, natural orifice. How it entices in a dive! Seduces in a move to lure! Cajoles as a siren! Is it inimical? I’d imagine no. But it is alive—solely here, now upon us. A sum of a total or a sole minus, it is, I muse, never a line more but a dire model of itemized, evocative names in a hopeful ode—sole lyric arisen above roles, afore-now unexamined or unelicited. I to revere Nufer is a fit; it is even useful. One can open one’s eyes in awe, but one can even adore how agile, he wisely (re)defines animaly palaver in a lexicon... or is it a paradox? One to be polared? A-hah! I go for it. One fan of, I hope, many to come.Katy Masuga
1. کتاب اوّل: اوج اعتلای بیزانس2. کتاب دوّم: تمدّن اسلامی3. کتاب سوّم: تمدّن یهودی4. کتاب چهارم: عصر ظلمت5. کتاب پنجم: اوج مسیحیّت•••مترجمانابوطالب صارمی: کتاب اوّل / ابوالقاسم پاینده: کتاب دوّم / ابوالقاسم طاهری: کتابهای سوّم تا پنجمسرویراستار: محمود مصاحبویراستاران: ابوطالب صارمی، خشایار دیهیمی، جواد یوسفیان، هرمز عبداللهی