Book Description
The moving, inspiring memoir of one of the great women of our times, Shirin Ebadi, winner of the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize and advocate for the oppressed, whose spirit has remained strong in the face of political persecution and despite the challenges she has faced raising a family while pursuing her work.
Best known in this country as the lawyer working tirelessly on behalf of Canadian photojournalist, Zara Kazemi – raped, tortured and murdered in Iran – Dr. Ebadi offers us a vivid picture of the struggles of one woman against the system. The book movingly chronicles her childhood in a loving, untraditional family, her upbringing before the Revolution in 1979 that toppled the Shah, her marriage and her religious faith, as well as her life as a mother and lawyer battling an oppressive regime in the courts while bringing up her girls at home.
Outspoken, controversial, Shirin Ebadi is one of the most fascinating women today. She rose quickly to become the first female judge in the country; but when the religious authorities declared women unfit to serve as judges she was demoted to clerk in the courtroom she had once presided over. She eventually fought her way back as a human rights lawyer, defending women and children in politically charged cases that most lawyers were afraid to represent. She has been arrested and been the target of assassination, but through it all has spoken out with quiet bravery on behalf of the victims of injustice and discrimination and become a powerful voice for change, almost universally embraced as a hero.
Her memoir is a gripping story – a must-read for anyone interested in Zara Kazemi’s case, in the life of a remarkable woman, or in understanding the political and religious upheaval in our world.
Customer Reviews:
A good introduction to Iran and its Society.......2007-06-05
This is a concise book on how the society is affected by revolution and its vagaries in Iran. Written by the venerable Nobel Laureate, it showcases many brutalities done by the regime in the name of tradition and religion. This also shows a woman's struggle to cope with the human rights in such regime. Although written very briefly and possibly in a haste, meaning that scenes jump to one another suddenly and there is no in depth explanation why the society is behaving like this, this book is a primer in civil movement in Iran. I had a long-time suspicion that Iranian law is very messy, making its people hate the regime and it turn Islam itself. This book proves it, which shows how Iranian penal code uses extreme means in the name of Islam, whereas the same laws are very different in other muslim countries.
a good woman.......2007-05-23
Here is a woman who is trying her hardest to be islamic and make excuses for her religion which is a bad one to start with. Very few mulims seem able to look at Mohammed and his life. However, this is a brave woman in the limits of Islam.
WONDERFUL!.......2007-03-22
This book is the perfect book for people looking to read inspirational stories. I would recomend this book to anyone with an open mind.
Good insight into the Iranian view of their own nation.......2006-12-21
This book gives an intelligent and objective view of the turmoil of Iranian life from the 1979 revolution to the last year. It isn't a history book, as mentioned in other reviews, but a memoir as it admits, thus it is more focused on the life and reflections of the author rather than a documentary approach. The author is a devout muslim and seeks to promote the view that Islam and democracy are not incompatible. She is honest in her accounts of her government and how it has treated its citizens, but she is not a shill for promoting the official US line about our relations with Iran. She definitely feels that the US has a good share of blame for the state of things. However, she does seem to avoid, for the most part, the common Iranian party line that all things bad are America's fault. Her account of the reform period of Iranian politics in the late 90's is particularly helpful in understanding how the man on the street over there really felt about the ups and downs of that time.
It is a fairly quick read that will leave you with a clearer understanding of the Iranian people, something much needed as we try to decide how to approach our relations with them.
Interesting.......2006-12-16
Ms. Ebadi has a worthwhile story to tell. She certainly is a courageous woman! I can't catagorize this as a great book because I put it down several times and was not running to pick it up again. I don't understand the title at all. After reading the book I don't see Iran "awakening" at all. I see the author as someone either very clever in evading death, or just plain lucky. I agree with a previous reviewer who felt the author wrong in unfavorably judging Iranians who left after the revolution. Most of them were running for their lives, as perhaps she might have done. The author's own daughter left to study in Canada. It is a good book but I preferred Roya Hakakian's "Journey from the land of No."
Book Description
This book tells the stories of the lives and achievements of fifteen women scientists who either won a Nobel Prize or played a crucial role in a Nobel Prize-winning project. NOBEL PRIZE WOMEN IN SCIENCE book reveals the relentless discrimination these women faced both as students and as researchers. They succeeded because they were passionately in love with science.
Customer Reviews:
case studies in discrimination.......2006-02-20
McGrayne chronicles the discrimination faced by female scientists in the 20th century. Even by those who would eventually achieve the highest prize of the Nobel. She also includes biographies of a few women who never won the Nobel, but were acknowledged later by many to have merited it. Lise Meitner, of course. She was doubly disadvantaged. Being female and Jewish in Germany during the 1920s and 30s. The story of how Otto Hahn won the Physics Nobel shortly after World War 2 for work that he did jointly with her is well known to physicists.
Jocelyn Bell's work on pulsars is also described. Bell's advisor would later garner the Nobel for this, though Bell made the crucial observations and deductions from those.
Both these chapters can be exercises in frustration to a reader. Injustices that were never remedied. Though Bell is still alive, and so there is a chance that the Nobel committe might redress this oversight.
Great book.......2005-09-03
I found this book really excellent--I was coming at it from being a female scientist (chemist) myself. Good from beginning to end....no complaints!
stories of women who loved science.......2000-11-04
Why so few? This is the question which the author put on the first page of the book. More than 300 scientists have won the Nobel Prize since its establishment,however, only 10 of them are women. Why? Why have so few women won the Nobel Prize in science? Some people might say this small number could be evidence for old prejudices. But the author tried to find a different answer through this book. This book contains stories of 15 women scientists who won the Nobel Prize or had a critical role in Nobel Prize winning works. Although this book takes the style of a biography and also describes all the scientific details quite well, it is neither just a biography nor just a science book for general readers. It is more than both of them. These women scientists had gone through lots of difficulties. All of them had experiences of being rejected from the opportunity of receiving a higher education. Most of them had more than once been mistreated and disregarded of their abilities as well as their works. And some of them, such as Rosalind Franklin, still have not received the full credit which she deserves. One might say that all the scientists who did remarkable works had faced and overcome many kinds of difficulties. But these women had to carry the added burden of being "women scientists". So, as the author pointed, another question should arise when the book is finished. Why so many? Why have so many women challenged themselves with such difficult works in spite of all the obstacles? The answer is simple. They loved science. And, through this book, the readers will find a love and a understanding for these fearless women as well as their lover,science.
Liberation in Hour-Long Chapters.......2000-09-17
Nobel Prize Women in Science is a superb collection of hour-long biographies of women who either won a Nobel Prize or worked on a project that won a Nobel Prize in science. The biographies are full of memorable vignettes and quotes and lucid explanations of the scientific discoveries. This reader found the book liberating because it debunked so many myths she had had about good scientists. This book makes great bedtime reading and excellent gifts for both men and women.
inspirational.......1999-10-20
I was enthralled by this delightful, healing, and eye opening crediting over the wonder works of scientific endeavor made by woman--unsung heroines who did not flinch one bit from their true calling, what for all the drowning out and dumbing down of class ostracism inundating them and their sisters in their times. These Ladies are the truest measure of what is called a benchmark in the progress of humanity to wake up and rise to The Greatest Challenge: to free the mind, the spirit, the yoke of history's circumstance, to unite us in peace, recognition, respect, and unqualified defference to all who carry forth the Light. From my heart, Thank You Sharon Bertsch McGrayne! And for those for whom it is easier to quip, 'a woman's place is in the home, raising children and so forth....' I'll just add, we got BILLIONS of 'em.
Book Description
Since it was first awarded in 1901, only twelve women have won the Nobel Prize for Peace. They hail from all over the world, including the United States, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Central America. Engaging and inspiring, these women clearly demonstrate that there is something each of us can do to advance a just, positive peace. Whether they began by insisting on garbage collection or simply by planting a tree, each understood that peace must be global in order to be sustained. All learned that peace is not always popular, but believed they must persevere. All are truly champions for peace.
Customer Reviews:
Empowered women: the quiet revolution........2007-03-22
As Judith Hicks Stiehm beautifully depicts in this telling of the contributions of 12 women Nobel Peace Laureates, women are creative thinkers and leaders. And as she also points out, war is a phenomenon that is associated with men. As an evolutionary biologist I've written an exploration for why women, as a group, are biologically less inclined to use physical violence to resolve conflicts ("Women, Power, and the Biology of Peace." Judith L. Hand (not Latta)) and why women are better natural negotiators. I also argue in that book and another ("A Future Without War") why it is that the empowerment of women across the globe is the critical catalyst needed to actually put an end to wars. Women in New Zealand were the first given the vote--real political power--roughly 100 years ago. Women are becoming increasingly active in government and conflict negotiations. The women described by Stiehm are the vanguard of a flood of women who will be working to change history in a quiet revolution in exactly the way Nobel hoped would happen. Her book is an inspiration for us all, women and men of good will, because it shows us women from across the globe and all walks of life stepping up and taking their share of the responsibility for how we run our world.
Real Life Inspiration.......2006-11-17
Since the Nobel Peace Prize was first awarded in 1903, it has been given to only 12 women. Judith Hicks Stiehm presents the life story of each of these remarkable people, women from dramatically different backgrounds all around the globe. The stories, so cleary and compellingly told, are fascinating page-turners in themselves. And together they convey the essential point that anyone, anywhere, can work for peace, doing small things that may in fact add up to big changes to benefit the neighborhood, the locality, the region--even the world. For every reader (woman or man) who's felt disheartened and powerless in recent years, this book is both a roadmap and a real life inspiration--and the perfect gift for any young woman wondering what to do with her life.
Fascinating life stories that show what one person can do: a book for women and men.......2006-09-01
In CHAMPIONS FOR PEACE Judith Hicks Stiehm has written in lively, highly readable prose the life stories of the twelve women who have won the Nobel Peace Prize. Beyond that, the book dramatizes the effect one person--you, perhaps?--can have. On the last page, she writes: "Each of us has different circumstances and different resources; nevertheless, each of us has the capacity to act." (p. 224)
What is most striking here is the variety in the women's origins and lives. A world map shows that three are from the United States--Jane Addams, Emily Greene Balch, and Jody Williams. From Guatemala, Rigoberta Menchu Tum. Ireland, Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan. Sweden, Alva Myrdal. Austria, Bertha von Suttner. Iran, Shirin Ebadi. Burma, Aung San Suu Kyi. Macedonia, Mother Teresa. Kenya, Wangari Muta Maathai. As the author tells us: "They have been young, middleaged, and old. They have been of titled nobility, and they have been subsistence farmers. They have held doctorates, and they have also been barely schooled." (p. ix)
What did these women have in common? Stiehm says, "a vision, a commitment to action, and a willingness to persevere in the face of criticism and, in some cases, imprisonment." (p ix)
This book itself has required a strong commitment on the part of the author to do the research and writing it required, and the accomplishment here reflects Stiehm's own extraordinary wisdom and qualifications as a writer, political scientist, and advocate. The preface and conclusion are especially helpful, as is the epilogue with its questions for U. S. readers and non-U.S. readers to think about.
While the life stories are those of women, the book is for and about men also: Stiehm lists the organizations and the men who have won the prize. She touches on the nature of wars and violence, arguing that war is violence done mostly by men to men--and she argues strenuously that the behavior of men must change: "After all, most violence is done by men, and particularly at the direction of governments. . . . This means that it is important to study the psychology and interests of the men who authorize and exercise violence." (p 224)
I'd like to see this important book in every home, every school and public library, in English where that is spoken, and in appropriate translations elsewhere. The book is easy to read and the many photographs of the women add to its appeal and to the understanding it brings.
Book Description
Former President Jimmy Carter has won the respect and affection of millions for his long and illustrious career as a humanitarian, a peacemaker, and an active promoter of human rights around the world. The Nobel Committee recognized President Carter’s remarkable achievements by awarding him the Peace Prize in October 2002 for his accomplishments fostering peace during his presidency and his tireless work after leaving office monitoring elections, promoting peaceful resolutions to conflict, and helping provide food, shelter, and healthcare to the world’s poor.
Now, in
The Personal Beliefs of Jimmy Carter, readers have for the first time in one volume the complete text of his spiritual autobiography,
Living Faith, in which President Carter shares the values and experiences that have shaped his life, and
Sources of Strength, fifty-two of his favorite Bible lessons that he has taught at his hometown church in Plains, Georgia, over the decades. These radiant works beautifully capture how President Carter has transformed his deep religious faith into an enduring course of action that has brought life and hope to those most in need. Bestsellers when they first published, these two books are even more resonant today as we continue to search for the answers to life’s most meaningful questions.
Customer Reviews:
The Personal beliefs of Jimmy carter.......2006-11-05
I have read most of his books and find them all to be well written and this one is stands up to the test.
It's horrible to see these attacks on Jimmy Carter..........2004-10-24
It really is awful to see ideological conservatives give a critique of a book they haven't even read here at Amazon.
One went as far as to claim that the only thing Carter did that was worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize was the progress he made at Camp David.
Have they been so blinded by war and hate that they can't even look toward Carter's admirable work in Habitat for Humanity as a basis for him winning this prestigious award?
They obviously must be. They certainly are dedicated to crushing the image of someone who represents solving problems with great love and effort, rather than with destruction and arrogant minsunderstanding.
But I recommend this book for someone with an open enough mind to see how wonderful a human being Jimmy Carter is. Regardless of your partisan bias.
He tried.......2004-06-03
During the Carter Administration, President Carter had to deal with the deaths of his mother, sister, and brother, and that was near the start of his four years of Presidency. Then there was the Hostage Crises in Iran. President Carter had to try anything, and everything to get the hostages. It cost the lives of several soldiers when thier helicopter crashed in the desert. Essentially, President Carter got a raw deal. He was not reckognized by those who came home from Iran, or anybody else in the United States, as the saviour. President Reagan got that glory. And, at president Reagan's Inaugural Ball/Dinner, he did not even mention President Carter. This may sound like a put down of both administrations, but it is not. Both men had their faults, as does today's President Bush. I have the ultimate respect for President Carter. For somebody who will be 80 October 1, it does not surprise me that he is still constructing houses, taking care of the other persons, etc.
Personal Beliefs of an An Honest President And Peanut Farmer.......2004-03-23
Nobel Peace Prize winner and humanitarian President Carter explains how certain events have influenced his life in this excellent autobiography. Although the book contains the words of a man that is not afraid to speak the truth, he does not go into details of the failed attempt to rescue American hostages in Iran. He micromanaged the rescue team from the White House, instead of empowering his men in the field to make any decisions. Unlike other presidents, he has not been bought off by corporate America.
Book Description
Schelling's story is a missing piece in Cold War history. We are used to hearing accounts of the battles, the conferences, the political leaders, the dangerous times. What isn't in these tellings is the story of the civilian strategists whose ideas framed the arguments and influenced the direction events took. Their impact was considerable, and the Nobel Prize has brought Thomas Schelling out of the shadows. This book rounds out that story and delves into topics germane and significant today.
Customer Reviews:
untold story.......2007-04-11
This book is a worthy addition to the history of the Cold War and brings Schelling to life as a character.
I would recommend also Fred Kaplan's 'Wizards of Armageddon' about Robert and Alberta Wohlstetter (the former the academic advisor to Paul Wolfowitz) and also Bernard Brodie.
Amazon.com
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
Book Description
In this powerful and dramatic biography Sylvia Nasar vividly re-creates the life of a mathematical genius whose career was cut short by schizophrenia and who, after three decades of devastating mental illness, miraculously recovered and was honored with a Nobel Prize. A Beautiful Mind traces the meteoric rise of John Forbes Nash, Jr., a prodigy and legend by the age of thirty, who dazzled the mathematical world by solving a series of deep problems deemed "impossible" by other mathematicians.
But at the height of his fame, Nash suffered a catastrophic mental breakdown and began a harrowing descent into insanity, resigning his post at MIT, slipping into a series of bizarre delusions, and eventually becoming a dreamy, ghostlike figure at Princeton, scrawling numerological messages on blackboards. He was all but forgotten by the outside world -- until, remarkably, he emerged from his madness to win world acclaim. A feat of biographical writing, A Beautiful Mind is also a fascinating look at the extraordinary and fragile nature of genius.
Customer Reviews:
He Saw The World In A Way No One Could Have Imagined: A Tour de Force.......2007-10-06
~A Beautiful Mind: The Life of Mathematical Genius and Nobel Laureate John Nash~ is Sylvia Nassar's most remarkable biography of the life of mathematician John Forbes Nash, Jr. This is not the most flattering of biographies, but a remarkably intriguing one nonetheless. Nicknamed the Kid Professor, Nash started teaching first at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at age twenty-three. Nash gained acclaim following after he became a Nobel Laureate in 1994 for his contributions to economics, game theory, and mathematics. But earning this prestigious accolade was marked by a career of alienation and hardship.
He devised the so called Nash equilibrium, and contributed a breathtaking corpus of research to the study of game theory. Game theory concerns itself with the study of strategic interactions between agents. Parties choose strategies which will maximize their return in response to the strategies that other parties choose. Nash transcended the earlier zero-sum game theories, and revolutionized the application of game theory to both economic, political and military strategic questions. Traditionally, game theory applications were primarily were zero-sum in nature, with the winner-take-all approach-- i.e., my win is your loss, or vice versa.
True genius is often thought to meet the edge of insanity by some people. This held true in the life of John Nash. Lamentably, Nash suffered from schizophrenia, and made harrowing descent into mental illness complete with psychotic delusions and bizarre visions. His illness fueled his bizarre obsessions with numerology and other eccentricities.
Nash resigned his post at MIT after his first serious episodes. He took a position with the enigmatic Cold War think tank the RAND Corporation. RAND, the ultra secretive civilian think tank had a casual campus environment in the laid-back Santa Monica, CA of the 1950s, which hosted some of the most brilliant minds in the United States. RAND was enveloped in a melange of detachment, paranoia, and megalomania. His tenure there perhaps fueled his later Cold War paranoia, which came to bloom when his mental illness reached its full blown stage.
After some breakdowns, Nash recouped his bearings and went onto teach at Princeton. There he met his future wife Alicia who was one of his students. She became enamored with his genius. And contrary to popular myth, though schizophrenics are often thought to be devoid of personal attachments, Nash could show empathy and love. Though his illness frequently revisited him, his wife helped him cope with it. Nash scrawled numbers all over Princeton Hall, and became a mysterious ghost-like figure on the campus of Princeton University. His illness ultimately strained their marriage to the point of separation for a while. At one time, he coped with his illness by traveling Europe and became enamored of his delusions of self-importance. When his mental illness became full-blown, it incapacitated him and left him feeling utterly worthless. His wife had him committed to an institution briefly, before reconciling and moving back in with him to care for him. Instead of being relegated to obscurity, Nash eventually overcame his mental illness with age, and with the recommendation of his peers began to earn the recognition he long deserved.
All things considered, this is a most remarkable look at the life of John Nash. Perhaps the eccentric Nash would not have been very well regarded but for his genius. But Nash showed himself capable of compassion, empathy and love in the relationship with his wife Alicia. Nash possessed as his wife Alicia saw--a beautiful mind. Nash's life was dramatized in the 2001 film A Beautiful Mind based on Nassar's book, which renewed interest in the book first published in 1998.
My $.02 worth.......2007-09-30
I read this book long after it was published, and long after it had accumulated more reviews than anyone is likely to wade through. It's tough to think of a fresh approach, but here's a try:
An amusing, minor sub-theme in this book is the fact that John Nash, who ranks at or near the top among American mathematicians of the past century, was a flop at picking stocks. He devoted a tremendous amount of time to looking for patterns and other indicators that might help him beat the market, and he wound up doing worse than your average patzer. He even lost a sizable chunk of his mother's investment funds.
Think about that the next time you are tempted to respond to one of those blaring magazine or TV ads offering to sell you a technical stock-picking system that really works.
Dad's father's day gift.......2007-07-22
Amazon's website wouldn't let me type a zip code; the website defaulted the zip based on city name and zip was incorrect. As a result, package couldn't be delivered and I was issued a full refund.
Good, but sometimes to in-depth.......2007-06-29
Very good story, I could hardly put it down.
though at times Sylvia spent an entire chapter simply talking about a university, She struggled staying with her point, though only at times.
A Beautiful Book.......2007-06-15
In Nasar's biography of the Nobel prize winning mathematician John Forbes Nash, Jr., his descent into irrationality is portrayed by chronicling several experiences in his frenetic childhood and those from his early adulthood to the present.
In the first chapters of the book, Nasar juxtaposes several episodes in Nash's distinguished childhood, displaying his early genius in chemistry and math in conjunction with those that reveal a childishness equally as impressive. As a youngster, Nasar shows his penchant for pulling pranks on his friends, at one time electrocuting a neighbor and even his own sister, who was continually forced by her mother as they grew up to include the younger Nash in her social activities. However, Nash, though not taciturn, preferred reading encyclopedias and most of all, experimenting. His experiments with bomb-making actually killed one of his childhood friends, after which Nash stopped making them for the rest of his life.
The book describes Nash's early discovery of his love for math one day while reading a book about Fermat's Theorem on prime numbers, which he proved by his own self at the age of 12. It also details his spurning Harvard for Princeton University, a less recognized mathematics school then despite Albert Einstein's prominent position in the faculty, upon his graduation from Carnegie Mellon University, then known as the Carnegie Institute of Technology, because he felt they had not tried hard enough to pursue him.
Indeed, his egocentrism is depicted throughout the whole biography, and it is this megalomania which would later develop into full-blown schizophrenia and terrorize his whole constitution for decades, halting his academic production almost completely during that time period.
Nash ascribes his sudden affliction to a number of disappointments: first, though Nash had solved a problem on turbulence in which he was able to devise a mathematical model for notating its sudden changes in motion, he found out when he was about to submit his paper for publication that someone else, an Italian by the name of De Giorgi, had beat him to it and published his paper in the most obscure journal imaginable; secondly, he says in a letter that his attempt to revise quantum theory was "possibly overreaching and psychologically destabilizing."; third, he attributes his failure to win the Fields Medal in 1958--his last chance since it is generally awarded to young mathematicians--as a contributing factor to his disease. The rest of the book focuses on his delusional experiences and the assistance and loving care of his small group of friends, including his wife, which helped him finally regain control of his mind in 1990.
It was at Princeton that Nash became familiar with John von Neumann's famous theory on rational human behavior, The Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, which focused on zero-sum two person games, and which he felt was unrealistic for predicting most economic situations. Concentrating on what to him were gaping flaws in von Neumann's work, he set out to write his epochal dissertation on a theory that could encompass all realistic scenarios, called Non-cooperative Games, which contained the definition of his equilibrium theory, whose name he is now its eponym. His results also inspired the most famous game of strategy in all of social science: The Prisoner's Dilemma. More significantly, it was this work which won him his Nobel prize in Economics in 1994.
Nasar states that his hyper-competitive spirit was fueled by an intense drive to succeed. When he did not receive an assistant professorship offer from Princeton after obtaining his Ph.D at only 22 years of age, despite his seminal paper on algebraic manifolds, he was humiliated deeply and thereafter went to MIT where he was offered a fellowship. At 25, Nasar describes Nash's sudden impulse to solve the embedding problem for manifolds--a problem which had been left unsolved since it was suggested by Riemann--as a way to belittle a colleague at MIT. And he did. This is today one of the most famous works in pure mathematics.
The body of research which Nasar obviously has pored over is impressive, and it shows in the fluidity of his biography, which flows like a novel, and the immense number of sources cited. It is a fascinating book and one which I recommend as an insight into the emergence of a supposedly degenerative disease and its subsequent effects on a man who at the time seemed on the verge of unprecedented success and fame in the scholastic world. It also shows how even the most logical can at times seem most illogical, and vice versa. As Nash says, "the ideas I had about supernatural beings came to me the same way my mathematical ideas did." For me, I was less intrigued by the episodes detailing Nash's battles with schizophrenia than I was with those of his academic achievements. His spirit and motivation is something I wish I possessed much more of.
All in all, this is a book I enjoyed immensely. And for $2 at Deseret Industries, I couldn't have asked for a better way to spend my money!
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Ink Paintings by Gao Xingjian: The Nobel Prize Winner
Xingjian Gao
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ASIN: 193190703X |
Book Description
This collection of over 60 ink paintings by Gao Xingjian represents his philosophy and painting style. Gao believes that the world cannot be explained and that artistic creation offers the only way to escape into meaning. The images convey these aspects of an inexplicable world-the black-and-white inner world that underlies the complexity of human existence. Drawn in traditional Chinese black ink on rice paper, each painting is characterized by a spontaneous overflow of the ink, creating metaphorical abstract images.
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- A great, great book!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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The Nobel Book of Answers: The Dalai Lama, Mikhail Gorbachev, Shimon Peres, and Other Nobel Prize Winners Answer Some of Life's Most Intriguing Questions for Young People
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Mightier Than the Sword: World Folktales for Strong Boys
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The Book of Lists for Teens
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The Signers: The 56 Stories Behind the Declaration of Independence
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The All-New Book of Lists for Kids
ASIN: 0689863101 |
Book Description
Since 1901, the Nobel Prize has honored the world’s great geniuses in the most important fields: physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, economics, and world peace. What if children could ask these creative thinkers about some of life’s most intriguing mysteries, such as ""Why can’t I live on french fries?"" and ""What is love?"" the answers from the Dalai Lama, Mikhail Gorbachev, Shimon Peres, Desmond Tutu, and seventeen other Nobel Prize Laureates are rich with surprise, humor, and of course, wisdom. Every single answer will make readers think...and learn something new.
Customer Reviews:
A great, great book!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.......2005-03-16
This book was so great, I can't imagine why someone would not like it. Some parts were so good, I reread them many times. WHY WE HAVE TO GO TO SCHOOL, WHAT IS POLITICS were a few of my favorites but WHAT IS LOVE, WHY ARE SOME PEOPLE RICH AND OTHERS POOR were not so good. Overall, this book is a sure hit!
Product Description
John Steinbeck writes of such a trip in OF MICE AND MEN: the desperate longing of men for some kind of home-roots that they can believe in, land that they can care for-and the painful search for self. This beautiful, timeless novel speaks of the love that men can feel for each other-one inarticulate, dumb, sometimes violent in his need; the other clever, hopeful, and tied to a responsibility he doesn't want.
Customer Reviews:
One Of My Ultimate Favorite Childhood Books.......2007-10-07
This is a book I finished in one day. I had to read for my freshmen honors English class over the summer. Lenny and George, two complete opposites manage to stick together and care for each other in the hardest of times. One huge and strong with the mind of an innocent child and one small but with unbelievable streets smarts. The book is very short but well detailed with several surprisingly twist. A Must Read!
A Lesson in Human Tragedy.......2007-01-31
This piece is ultimate Steinbeck. The author has limited his characters to two major ones and a few ancillary ones. The book is short, however, the tale is told thoroughly. The reader feels so very sorry for George. George is a study of loyalty, decency and patience and how one feels so utterly responsible for the life of another human being-in this case his childhood friend, Lennie, who is somewhat mentally challenged. This book is a sad account of the fragility of human beings and how one person will be loyal to the other person til the end-even if he needs to commit murder to show it. The character, Candy, is so very pathetic too and his comments about " a stranger killing my old dog" are so very sad! One tends to think that it was because of Candy feeling badly about a stranger killing his dog that George does what he does. This is a beautiful book!
Average customer rating:
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Rita Levi-Montalcini: Nobel Prize Winner (Women in Medicine)
Susan Tyler Hitchcock
Manufacturer: Chelsea House Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0791080285 |
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