Science & Technology Biographies

"We are matter and long to be received by an Earth that conceived us, which accepts and reconstitutes us, its children, each of us, without exception, every one. The journey is long, and then we start homeward, fathomless as to what home might make of us." When Chris Dombrowski burst onto the literary scene with Body of Water, the book...

As a practising mortician, Caitlin Doughty has long been fascinated by our pervasive terror of dead bodies. In From Here to Eternity, she sets out in search of cultures unburdened by such fears. With curiosity and morbid humour, Doughty introduces us to inspiring death-care innovators and participates in powerful death practices almost entirely unknown in the West. She explores new...

For most of human history, mental illness has been largely untreatable. Sufferers lived their lives—if they survived—in and out of asylums, accumulating life's wreckage around them. In 1948, all that changed when an Australian doctor and recently returned prisoner of war, working alone in a disused kitchen, set about an experimental treatment for one of the scourges of mankind—manic depression,...

More than fifty years after his death, Albert Einstein's vital engagement with the world continues to inspire others, spurring conversations, projects, and research in the sciences as well as the humanities. Einstein for the 21st Century shows us why he remains a figure of fascination. In this wide-ranging collection, eminent artists, historians, scientists, and social scientists describe Einstein's influence on...

The scientists affiliated with the early Royal Society of London have long been regarded as forerunners of modern empiricism, rejecting the symbolic and moral goals of Renaissance natural history in favour of plainly representing the world as it really was. In Aesthetic Science, Alexander Wragge-Morley challenges this interpretation by arguing that key figures such as John Ray, Robert Boyle, Nehemiah...

Acknowledged internationally for his ground-breaking scientific research in the field of magnetic resonance, Sir Paul Callaghan was a scientist and visionary with a rare gift for promoting science to a wide audience. Paul Callaghan: Luminous Moments brings together some of his most significant writing, offering eloquent narratives spanning science, fatherhood, illness and life that will endure in this country's literature....

The Biographic series presents an entirely new way of looking at the lives of the world's greatest thinkers and creatives. It takes the 50 defining facts, dates, thoughts, habits, and achievements of each subject and uses infographics to convey all of them in vivid snapshots. Each Biographic title is designed to be as entertaining as it is informative. Timelines not...

The Biographic series presents an entirely new way of looking at the lives of the world's greatest thinkers and creatives. It takes the 50 defining facts, dates, thoughts, habits, and achievements of each subject, and uses infographics to convey all of them in vivid snapshots. Each Biographic title is designed to be as entertaining as it is informative. Timelines not...

Freewheeling and profane ... Wylie covers plenty of ground, explaining in illuminating and often scary detail how Cambridge Analytica exploited the data to create Facebook pages that would needle "neurotic, conspiratorial citizens", propagating an outraged solidarity. - New York Times What if you could peer into the minds of an entire population? What if you could target the weakest with...

Discover the true story of a self-taught surgeon and trailblazing figure in medical history – Madame Restell, a revolutionary surgeon who fought for women's rights and healthcare in Gilded Age New York. An industrious immigrant who built her business from the ground up, Madame Restell was a self-taught surgeon on the cutting edge of healthcare in pre-Gilded Age New York....

Engaging, funny, and unflinching essays about coming of age as a transplant patient and living each day as a gift Adina Talve-Goodman was born with a congenital heart condition and survived multiple operations over the course of her childhood, including a heart transplant at age nineteen. In these seven essays, she tells the story of her chronic illness and her...

Impressive stories of women using geospatial technology to create sustainable solutions for problems the world faces. The third volume in the Women and GIS series shows how 31 diverse women in various STEAM fields discovered their passion, broke down barriers, and used maps, analysis, imagery, and geographic information systems (GIS) to advance their fields and improve the world. Sharing their...

Shortlisted, 2023 Margaret and Colin Roderick Literary Award Two Australian scientists played a vital yet largely unknown role in the Allied victory in the Second World War. Almost eight decades later, Wizards of Oz finally tells their story. In this fast-paced and compelling book, Brett Mason reveals how childhood friends from Adelaide - physicist Mark Oliphant and medical researcher Howard...

Eric Brown was on a University of Edinburgh exchange course in Germany in 1939, and the first he knew of the war was when the Gestapo came to arrest him. They released him, not realising he was a pilot in the RAF volunteer reserve, and the rest is history. Eric Brown joined the Fleet Air Arm and went on to...

...a bracing adventure, and one where our ancestors are not reduced to characters of myth and legend, but real people of flesh and blood. It is through this most intimate dissection that the past is brought so vividly to life - The Telegraph It's an incisive book (pun intended) that will leave you with a newfound appreciation of the vessel...

'Charming and addictively accessible' STEVEN PINKER 'Original, authoritative and beautiful' BRIAN COX 'The most wonderful adventure' ROBIN INCE A brilliantly illustrated journey through the wonders and mysteries of the human brain – from a renowned husband-and-wife team of cognitive neuroscientists. Professors and husband-and-wife team Uta and Chris Frith have pioneered major studies of brain disorders throughout their nearly fifty-year career....

Now in paperback, the life story of a world-famous astronaut who was a trailblazer for women and is a role model today. Through the Glass Ceiling to the Stars tells the remarkable story of Eileen Collins, an aviation pioneer whose career milestones include becoming the first woman to command an American space mission and the first to pilot the space...

Now in paperback, the life story of a world-famous astronaut who was a trailblazer for women and is a role model today. Through the Glass Ceiling to the Stars tells the remarkable journey of Eileen Collins, an aviation pioneer whose career was marked by significant achievements. She made history as the first woman to command an American space mission and...

“We never train women in Sydney," Caroline de Costa was told in 1974 when she applied to become a junior registrar in obstetrics and gynaecology. She and her husband packed their bags and their children, and headed for Dublin. When Caroline first started in medicine, being an unmarried mother was frowned on, cane toads were used for pregnancy tests, and...

When the world stopped, all hopes rested on finding a vaccine. An unlikely team answered the call. Before Covid-19 was even given its name, a select group of scientists in Germany, assembled by married couple and decades-long research partners Ugur Sahin and Ozlem Tureci, began building 20 potential vaccines. As the deadly disease spread from country to country, what followed...

The Sky Is for Everyone is an internationally diverse collection of autobiographical essays by women who broke down barriers and changed the face of modern astronomy. Virginia Trimble and David Weintraub vividly describe how, before 1900, a woman who wanted to study the stars had to have a father, brother, or husband to provide entry. The considerable intellectual skills of...

The Sky Is for Everyone is an internationally diverse collection of autobiographical essays by women who broke down barriers and changed the face of modern astronomy. Virginia Trimble and David Weintraub vividly describe how, before 1900, a woman who wanted to study the stars had to have a father, brother, or husband to provide entry, and how the considerable intellectual...

A treasure trove of illuminating and entertaining quotations from the legendary naturalist Here is Charles Darwin in his own words—the naturalist, traveller, scientific thinker, and controversial author of On the Origin of Species, the book that shook the Victorian world. Featuring hundreds of quotations carefully selected by world-renowned Darwin biographer Janet Browne, The Quotable Darwin draws from Darwin's writings, letters...

A treasure trove of illuminating and entertaining quotations from the legendary naturalist Here is Charles Darwin in his own words—the naturalist, traveller, scientific thinker, and controversial author of On the Origin of Species, the book that shook the Victorian world. Featuring hundreds of quotations carefully selected by world-renowned Darwin biographer Janet Browne, The Quotable Darwin draws from Darwin's writings, letters...

From Snow White to Moana, from Pinocchio to Frozen, the animated films of Walt Disney Studios have moved and entertained millions. But few fans know that behind these groundbreaking features was an incredibly influential group of women who fought for respect in an often ruthless male-dominated industry and who have slipped under the radar for decades. In The Queens of...

At the age of twenty-eight, with his Beijing-based science communications business doing well and a new relationship blossoming, Ben Bravery woke from a colonoscopy to be told he had stage 3 colorectal cancer. As a scientist, Ben understood the seriousness of his condition. Cancer had quite literally whacked him in the guts, after all. But what he didn't expect was...

Shortlisted, 2023 NSW Premier's History Awards, NSW Community & Regional History Prize For lovers of natural history, this is the first book to explore Allan Riverstone McCulloch's scientific genius, artistic talents and his crucial role in the development of the Australian Museum. Allan Riverstone McCulloch (1885-1925) was a leading scientist and talented illustrator, the Australian Museum's most senior curator and...

Based on over eighty hours of interviews with Lovelock and unprecedented access to his personal papers and scientific archive, Jonathan Watts has written a definitive and revelatory biography of a fascinating, sometimes contradictory man. James Lovelock is best known as the father of Gaia Theory, the idea that life on Earth is a self-sustaining system in which organisms interact with...

Driven by a profound love of shapes and symmetries, Donald Coxeter (1907-2003) preserved the tradition of classical geometry when it was under attack by influential mathematicians who promoted a more algebraic and austere approach. His essential contributions include the famed Coxeter groups and Coxeter diagrams, tools developed through his deep understanding of mathematical symmetry. The Man Who Saved Geometry tells...

A new biography of Carl Linnaeus, offering a vivid portrait of Linnaeus's life and work. Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778), known as the father of modern biological taxonomy, formalised and popularised the system of binomial nomenclature used to classify plants and animals. Linnaeus himself classified thousands of species; the simple and immediately recognisable abbreviation 'L' is used to mark classifications originally made...

An admiring portrait of the pioneering entrepreneur from the former CNBC host and Forbes editor. One of the most influential figures of our time, Elon Musk is the most talked about man in America who isn’t running for president (yet!). In The Leadership Genius of Elon Musk, veteran business journalist Dennis Kneale chronicles Musk’s extraordinary journey, presenting him as a...

In 1942, a team at the University of Chicago achieved what no one had before: a nuclear chain reaction. At the forefront of this breakthrough stood Enrico Fermi. Straddling the ages of classical physics and quantum mechanics, equally at ease with theory and experiment, Fermi truly was the last man who knew everything—at least about physics. But he was also...

Examines the many layers that formed the man and unravels the reasons for his singular American Hero role. On February 20, 1962, John Glenn became a national star. That morning at Cape Canaveral, a small-town boy from Ohio took his place atop a rocket and soared into orbit to score a victory in the heavily contested Cold War. The television...

In The First Cell, Azra Raza offers a searing account of how both medicine and our society (mis)treats cancer, how we can do better, and why we must. A lyrical journey from hope to despair and back again, The First Cell explores cancer from every angle: medical, scientific, cultural, and personal. Indeed, Raza describes how she bore the terrible burden...

Dava Sobel, acclaimed and bestselling author of Longitude, chronicles the life and work of the most famous woman in the history of science – and the untold story of the young women who trained in her laboratory. ‘A fresh and feminist study of the pioneering Nobel laureate reveals her impact on the women she mentored and set on the path...

The Baby Doctor is an inspiring journey of the life of Gregor Alexander, who grew up in Colombia to become a beloved neonatal doctor in Florida. Alexander became close friends with legendary golfer Arnold Palmer and his wife Winnie, and together they were instrumental in building two state-of-the-art hospitals for women and children in the Orlando area. During his career,...

A "captivating, behind-the-scenes account" of NASA's historic OSIRIS-REx mission to return an asteroid sample and unlock the mystery of formation on life on Earth, braided with the remarkable life story of the mission's leader, Dr. Dante Lauretta (Sara Seager). On September 11, 1999, humanity made a monumental discovery in the vastness of space. Scientists uncovered an asteroid of immense scientific...

NOW IN PAPERBACK: A "captivating, behind-the-scenes account" of NASA's historic OSIRIS-REx mission to return an asteroid sample and unlock the mystery of the formation of life on Earth, braided with the remarkable life story of the mission's leader, Dr. Dante Lauretta (Sara Seager). On September 11, 1999, humanity made a monumental discovery in the vastness of space. Scientists uncovered an...

Rosemary Woodruff Leary has been known only as the wife of Timothy Leary, the Harvard professor-turned-psychedelic high priest, whose jailbreak captivated the counterculture and whose life on the run with Rosemary inflamed the U.S. government. But Rosemary was more than a mere accessory. She was a beatnik, a psychonaut, and a true believer who tested the limits of her mind...

Tesla jolts and flows between the extraordinary life of the inventor Nikola Tesla, the making of a feature film about him by the celebrated director Michael Almereyda, and episodes from the filmmaker's own restless, quixotic career. In these pages, we encounter Tesla's colleagues and friends intermingling with Almereyda's collaborators and influences: Thomas Edison and David Lynch, Mark Twain and Sam...

If asked to name an Australian woman scientist from the past, very few could. Let’s change that. Histories of Australian science largely overlook women. Their absence gives the impression that, until recently, there were no Australian women scientists. But this is far from true: women formed a much larger proportion of the scientific community from the 1900s to the 1940s...

A new, updated edition of the New York Times bestseller. Get inside the head of Steve Jobs: inventor, visionary, business mogul, and one of the most influential entrepreneurs in the world. Drawn from more than three decades of media coverage, this tribute serves up the best, most thought-provoking insights ever spoken by Steve Jobs: more than 200 quotations that are...

The private space industry's consensus leader, SpaceX, headed by controversial billionaire Elon Musk, is worth an estimated $187 billion today in 2023. SpaceX is taking on more roles, flying cargo, supplies, and astronauts to outer space, and even playing a central role as rocket supplier to NASA's Artemis moon mission. SpaceX: Elon Musk and the Final Frontier tells the story...

Solving for Why chronicles one man's journey to find the answer to the biggest of all life's questions: "Why?" Following a traumatic car accident, Dr. Shrime—the child of Lebanese immigrants fleeing a civil war, who later became a successful practising surgeon in Boston—found himself compelled to change the course of his life. He was determined to find meaning and satisfaction...

However much his work has been reviled or contested, Sigmund Freud remains one of the most significant thinkers of the last one hundred and fifty years. He founded psychoanalysis, and his vision of human behaviour and the unconscious mind provided a compelling paradigm for the understanding of society for much of the twentieth century. In this gripping new account, Matt...

In 1872, Eadward Muybridge, a British photographer who had landed in California during the Gold Rush, captured images of high-speed movement. These photographs would go on to lay the foundations for motion pictures, changing the west coast of America, and the world, forever. River of Shadows is both a bold and original biography of a true pioneer—his trailblazing work, and...

Brilliant, hard-working, immensely productive and influential, the naturalist Richard Owen was a great promoter of science and played a large role in shaping London's Natural History Museum. An often difficult and arrogant individual, he was accused of plagiarism and bullying, and is the only man whom Charles Darwin claimed to hate. Although strongly opposed to Darwin and Thomas Huxley's theories...

A major new biography of the brilliant naturalist, traveller, humanitarian, and codiscoverer of natural selection Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) was perhaps the most famed naturalist of the Victorian age. His expeditions to remote Amazonia and Southeast Asia were the stuff of legend. A collector of thousands of species new to science, he shared in the discovery of natural selection and...

From historical figures such as Marie Curie to contemporaries like Steve Jobs, a handful of innovators have changed the world. What made them so spectacularly inventive? Melissa A. Schilling, one of the world's leading experts on innovation, looks at the lives of seven creative geniuses—Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, Elon Musk, Dean Kamen, Nicola Tesla, Curie, and Jobs—to identify the traits...

It all started with a Hob Nob. As Dr Matt Morgan, an intensive care consultant, examined a patient who had suffered a cardiac arrest after inhaling some biscuit crumbs, he saw a flock of birds fly past the window. They must inhale objects all the time when flying, how do they survive? he thought to himself. This began an investigation...

From 2013 to 2017, Linda Boström Knausgård was periodically interned in a psychiatric ward where she was subjected to electroconvulsive therapy. As the treatments at this "factory" progressed, the writer's memories began to disappear. What good is a writer without her memory? This book, based on the author's experiences, is an eloquent and profound attempt to hold on to the...

On their 100th anniversary, the story of the extraordinary scientific expeditions that ushered in the era of relativity. In 1919, British scientists led extraordinary expeditions to Brazil and Africa to test Albert Einstein's revolutionary new theory of general relativity in what became the century's most celebrated scientific experiment. The result ushered in a new era and made Einstein a global...

Neanderthal Man is one of Amazon's top 100 books of 2014. The book tells the story of geneticist Svante Paabo's mission to answer a crucial question: what can we learn from the genomes of our closest evolutionary relatives? Beginning with the study of DNA in Egyptian mummies in the early 1980s and culminating in the sequencing of the Neanderthal genome...

If you have received an incurable cancer diagnosis, hearing about someone who made it is like spotting a rescue ship when you're drowning in a stormy sea. Miracle Survivors provides that lifeline with a collection of stories of cancer survivors who were given a terminal diagnosis but shocked everyone by thriving years past their prognoses. These "miracle survivors" have different...

One of America's top doctors rips the Band-Aid off to expose the American health care system Legislation written by drug and insurance companies, malpractice by corrupt and incompetent doctors, misguided and dishonest medical policy—the reality may be worse than you feared, and Medical Politics exposes all the secrets of a dirty American health care industry. Written by Stephen Soloway, one...

Women have won their political independence. Now is the time for them to achieve their economic freedom too. This was the great rallying cry of the pioneers who, in 1919, created the Women's Engineering Society. Spearheaded by Katharine and Rachel Parsons, a powerful mother and daughter duo, and Caroline Haslett, whose mission was to liberate women from domestic drudgery, it...

A witty, gossipy, sparkling history, full of bright jewels of anecdote... Magnificent Rebels is a triumph THE TIMES, Book of the Week Extraordinary... A thrilling intellectual history that reads like a racy, intelligent novel, with a cast of unforgettable characters SUNDAY TIMES Magnificent Rebels is a magnificent book: a revelation which could easily become an obsession SPECTATOR A thrilling page-turner,...

In this inspiring, uplifting, and heart-warming memoir, world-renowned veterinary surgeon Professor Noel Fitzpatrick explores his journey to becoming The Supervet. Growing up on the family farm in Ballyfin, Ireland, Noel's childhood was spent tending to the cattle and sheep, the hay and silage, the tractors and land, with his beloved sheepdog Pirate providing solace from the bullies that plagued him...

Described by Voltaire as 'perhaps a man of the most universal learning in Europe', Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) is often portrayed as a rationalist and philosopher who was wholly detached from the worldly concerns of his fellow men. Leibniz in His World provides a groundbreaking reassessment of Leibniz, telling the story of his trials and tribulations as an aspiring scientist...

Traditional biographies of Watt have concentrated on the steam engine, but in this book, Ben Russell tells a richer story, exploring the processes by which ephemeral ideas were transformed into tangible artefacts and the multifaceted world of production upon which Britain's industrial revolution depended. Generously illustrated, James Watt is a unique, expansive exploration of the engineer's life, not as an...

A spiritual biography of Albert Einstein that reveals for the first time the scientific and religious origins of his ethical philosophy. Nearly everyone is familiar with Einstein's scientific accomplishments, but few know the truth of how spiritual philosophies shaped his life and work. Scientists and biographers have treated Einstein's views on the eternal as vague and metaphorical. For Einstein, however,...

A new edition in the year of James Lovelock's 100th birthday With over fifty patents to his name and innumerable awards and accolades, James Lovelock is a distinguished and original thinker who has been widely recognised by the international scientific community. In this inspiring book, republished in the year of his 100th birthday, Lovelock tells his life story, from his...

In the 1960s and '70s, America spent $24 billion (around $150 billion in today's dollars) to land humans on the moon and 'win' the space race. While humans took their first steps on an extraterrestrial landscape, protesters at Cape Canaveral asked: Why waste money on space when there are so many issues here on Earth? More than 50 years later,...

Gray Matters is described by Henry Marsh, author of Do No Harm, as ‘A fascinating and wide-ranging account of what neurosurgery is really about – the past, present and future.’ Since its inception in the early twentieth century, brain surgery has maintained an air of mystery. As the saying ‘it’s not exactly brain surgery’ suggests, the specialty has become synonymous...

Gorillas are among the most recognisable of the large charismatic mammals, but climate change and poaching have brought them to the brink of extinction. Greg Cummings was the executive director of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund for seventeen years. He shares his fascinating experiences as a "wildlife Robin Hood"—raising money from the rich and famous and redistributing it to endangered...

A mathematician unlike any other, John Horton Conway (1937-2020) possessed a rock star's charisma, a polymath's promiscuous curiosity, and a sly sense of humour. Conway found fame as a barefoot professor at Cambridge, where he discovered the Conway groups in mathematical symmetry and the aptly named surreal numbers. He also invented the cult classic Game of Life, a cellular automaton...

One of Ms. magazine's "Most Anticipated Feminist Books of 2023" Authentic and inspiring, Everything That Rises personalises the realities of climate change by paralleling our relationship to the planet with the way we interact within our own homes. Nineteen-year-old Brianna Craft is having a panic attack. A professor's matter-of-fact explanation of the phenomenon known as "climate change" has her white-knuckling...

Louis Bromfield was a World War I ambulance driver, a Paris expat, and a Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist as famous in the 1920s as Hemingway or Fitzgerald. But he cashed in his literary success to finance a wild agrarian dream in his native Ohio. The ideas he planted at his utopian experimental farm, Malabar, would inspire America's first generation of organic...

By early morning of June 30, 1860, a large crowd began to congregate in front of Oxford University's brand-new Museum of Natural History. The occasion was the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and the subject of discussion was Charles Darwin's new treatise: fact or fiction? Darwin, a simultaneously reclusive and intellectually audacious squire from...

Nathaniel Kleitman arrived in the US as a penniless teenager who could not speak a word of English. Within a decade, he was pioneering the first ever experiments about how we sleep, and why. He stayed up for 115 hours. He tried moving from a 24-hour day to a 48-hour one. As he became a national sensation, students hungered to...

Explorers and travellers have always been attracted by the lure of the unknown. By traversing and mapping our planet, they have played a vital role in mankind's development. For almost two hundred years, the Royal Geographical Society has recognised their achievements by awarding its prestigious gold medals to those who have contributed most to our knowledge of the world. Taking...

"This visual - and artistically beautiful - format differentiates Einstein: The Man And His Mind from all previous books about him" - Amazon reader review "Gary Berger and Michael DiRuggerio's photographic exploration of Einstein is indubitably a coffee table book, but in its highest form. It's huge (34 x 26 cm) and contains a collection of beautiful imagery." "Massive, well-produced...

Einstein's Jury is the dramatic story of how astronomers in Germany, England, and America competed to test Einstein's developing theory of relativity. Weaving a rich narrative based on extensive archival research, Jeffrey Crelinsten shows how these early scientific debates shaped cultural attitudes we hold today. The book examines Einstein's theory of general relativity through the eyes of astronomers, many of...

Albert Einstein visited Oxford in 1931, to receive an honorary degree and to lecture on relativity and the Universe. While lecturing, he naturally chalked equations and diagrams on several blackboards. One of these is today the most popular object in Oxford's History of Science Museum. Yet Einstein tried to prevent its preservation because he was modest about his legendary status....

Physics Today, Notable Books of 2020 A finely drawn portrait of Einstein's sixteen months in Prague In the spring of 1911, Albert Einstein moved with his wife and two sons to Prague, the capital of Bohemia, where he accepted a post as a professor of theoretical physics. Though he intended to make Prague his home, he lived there for just...

Doctor Max Jacobson, whom the Secret Service under President John F. Kennedy code-named Dr. Feelgood, developed a unique "energy formula" that altered the paths of some of the twentieth century's most iconic figures, including President and Jackie Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, and Elvis. JFK received his first injection (a special mix of "vitamins and hormones," according to Jacobson) just...

How did a shy Polish immigrant kid - Karl Sven Woytek Sas Konkovitch Matthew Kruszelnicki - evolve into the fabulously eccentric Dr Karl? Shortlist ABIA Biography of the Year 2025 The only child of Holocaust survivors who fled to Australia in 1950, Karl has always forged his own destiny in an idiosyncratic way. Before he became one of the world's...

Shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award 'What a remarkable book this is; tender, funny, brave, heartfelt, radiant with love and life. It brought me often to laughter and - several times - to tears. It sings with joy and kindness' Robert Macfarlane From the Sunday Times bestselling author of Your Life in My Hands comes this vibrant, tender and deeply...

Doctors have been able to cure some forms of congenital blindness and deafness for decades. But this has created another problem: most people end up hating their new senses. To ask someone to adapt to a new sense is to ask them to reshape their entire world. Many simply cannot. Every waking minute, they are bombarded by meaningless sights or...

Bev Stohl ran the MIT office of the renowned linguist and social critic Noam Chomsky for nearly two and a half decades. This is her account of those years, working next to a man described by the New York Times as "arguably the most important intellectual alive today." Through these pages, we observe the comings and goings of a constant...