Science Book Club discussion

This is our book discussion for Jan 2019.

Started it.

There are points where Gleick indulges his more lyrical side, which makes my eyes roll. For example, there's this:

"The dome of the sky streched upward. The arcs of the sun and moon crossed directly ahead, rising and falling with the season. He could splash his heels in the surf and recognize a line thay formed the tripartite boundary between Earth, sea, and air..."

Just tell me he liked to visit the beach, for heaven's sake! It's this sort of writing that turned me off of his book Chaos: Making a New Science.

But overall, I think the biography genre suits Gleick well. He isn't too bad even when it comes to the science, but he tends to veer into the kind of writing quoted above when he tries to analogize to explain deeper concepts.

My wife is from Cedarhurst and I've visited Central Avenue and Far Rockaway many times. It's nice to read about an area I know fairly well. Too bad it's not MIT I know better ;)

I'm reading this book along with No Ordinary Genius: The Illustrated Richard Feynman by Christopher Sykes. It's a good companion. It's got pictures, interviews, excerpts of lectures and lots of good material about Feynman's life.

My review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I also just finished No Ordinary Genius: The Illustrated Richard Feynman. It was nice to read these two together. I was familiar with much of the material from other books, but it's nice to see them in Richard's own words and from others who knew him. After reading Richard's two "autobiographies", Gleick's biography, and Sykes's book, I feel like I have a pretty complete picture of what Feynman was about. Amazingly inspiring character.