Synopses & Reviews
Meticulously selected by bestselling author James Gleick, Harper Audio presents a steller collection of essays written by some of the most brilliant writers and thinkers of our time -- each one read by its creator.
Many of these cutting-edge essays offer glimpses of our new realms of discovery and thought, exploring territory that is unfimiliar to most of us or finding the unexpected in the midst of the familiar. This diverse, stimulating, and accessible collection is required for anyone who wants to travel to that frontier.
Synopsis
The bestselling author of "Chaos" and "Genius" introduces an exciting new science series featuring the best science writing of the year. Includes thoughts by Nobel Laureate physicist Steve Weinberg, Pulitzer Prize-winner Natalie Angier, eminent Harvard professor Jay Gould, mathematician Douglas Hofstadter, and foremost writer on astronomy Timothy Ferris.
About the Author
James Gleick's three books,
Chaos, Genuis,and
Faster,have been translated into nearly thirty languages. Gleick, a former reporter and editor of the
New York Times,lives in New York.>
Oliver Sacks is the author of nine books, including the acclaimed bestsellers The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat, An Anthropolgist on Mars, and Awakenings, which inspired the Oscar-winning movie of the same name. He is clinical professor of neurology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, as well as a regular contributor to The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, and numerous medical and scientific journals.
Susan McCarthy is co-author (with Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson) of the New York Times bestseller When Elephants Weep. She holds degrees in biology and journalism, writes regularly for Salon.com, and has contributed to Best American Science Writing. She lives in San Francisco.
Atul Gawande is a surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and a staff writer for The New Yorker. He is an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health, and he was nominated for a 2002 National Book Award for his book Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science. His new book, Better, will be coming out this spring.
Timothy Ferris's works include Seeing in the Dark, The Mind's Sky (both New York Times best books of the year), and The Whole Shebang (listed by American Scientist as one of the one hundred most influential books of the twentieth century). A fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Ferris has taught in five disciplines at four universities. He is an emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley and a former editor of Rolling Stone. His articles and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Vanity Fair, National Geographic, Scientific American, The Nation, The New Republic, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Book Review, and many other publications. A contributor to CNN and National Public Radio, Ferris has made three prime-time PBS television specials: The Creation of the Universe, Life Beyond Earth, and Seeing in the Dark. He lives in San Francisco.
Natalie Angier is a bestselling author and a Pulitzer Prize-winning science columnist for the New York Times. She is the author of four books: Natural Obsessions; The Beauty of the Beastly; Woman: An Intimate Geography; and, most recently, The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science. She lives in Takoma Park, Maryland, with her husband, Rick Weiss, a science reporter for the Washington Post, and her daughter.