Simon

Author: Alexander Masters
Publisher: Delacorte Press
ISBN: 034553221X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 375

Book Description
Alexander Masters tripped over his first book subject on a Cambridge sidewalk, and the result was the multi-award-winning bestseller Stuart: A Life Backwards. His second, he’s found under his floorboards. One of the greatest mathematical prodigies of the twentieth century, Simon Norton stomps around Alexander’s basement in semidarkness, dodging between stalagmites of bus timetables and engorged plastic bags, eating tinned kippers stirred into packets of Bombay mix. Simon is exploring a theoretical puzzle so complex and critical to our understanding of the universe that it is known as the Monster. It looks like a sudoku table—except a sudoku table has nine columns of numbers. The Monster has 808017424794512875886459904961710757005754368000000000 columns. But that’s not the whole story. What’s inside the decaying sports bag he never lets out of his clutches? Why does he hurtle out of the house in the middle of the night? And—good God!—what is that noxious smell that creeps up the stairwell? Grumpy, poignant, comical—more intimate than either the author or his quarry intended—Simon: The Genius in My Basement is the story of a friendship and a pursuit. Part biography, part memoir, and part popular science, it is a study of the frailty of brilliance, the measures of happiness, and Britain’s most uncooperative egghead eccentric.

A Life Discarded

Author: Alexander Masters
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0374178186
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Book Description
"An unorthodox investigative literary biography of a mysterious graphomaniac whose nearly 150 diaries are rescued from a dumpster by the author"--

How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci

Author: Michael J. Gelb
Publisher: Dell
ISBN: 0307573524
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 336

Book Description
This inspiring and inventive guide teaches readers how to develop their full potential by following the example of the greatest genius of all time, Leonardo da Vinci. Acclaimed author Michael J. Gelb, who has helped thousands of people expand their minds to accomplish more than they ever thought possible, shows you how. Drawing on Da Vinci's notebooks, inventions, and legendary works of art, Gelb introduces Seven Da Vincian Principles—the essential elements of genius—from curiosità, the insatiably curious approach to life to connessione, the appreciation for the interconnectedness of all things. With Da Vinci as your inspiration, you will discover an exhilarating new way of thinking. And step-by-step, through exercises and provocative lessons, you will harness the power—and awesome wonder—of your own genius, mastering such life-changing abilities as: •Problem solving •Creative thinking •Self-expression •Enjoying the world around you •Goal setting and life balance •Harmonizing body and mind Drawing on Da Vinci's notebooks, inventions, and legendary works of art, acclaimed author Michael J. Gelb, introduces seven Da Vincian principles, the essential elements of genius, from curiosita, the insatiably curious approach to life, to connessione, the appreciation for the interconnectedness of all things. With Da Vinci as their inspiration, readers will discover an exhilarating new way of thinking. Step-by-step, through exercises and provocative lessons, anyone can harness the power and awesome wonder of their own genius, mastering such life-changing skills as problem solving, creative thinking, self-expression, goal setting and life balance, and harmonizing body and mind.

The Romanovs

Author: Simon Sebag Montefiore
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0307266524
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 817

Book Description
"The acclaimed author of Young Stalin and Jerusalem gives readers an accessible, lively account--based in part on new archival material--of the extraordinary men and women who ruled Russia for three centuries."--NoveList.

Stuart: A Life Backwards

Author: Alexander Masters
Publisher: Delacorte Press
ISBN: 0440336120
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 267

Book Description
In this extraordinary book, Alexander Masters has created a moving portrait of a troubled man, an unlikely friendship, and a desperate world few ever see. A gripping who-done-it journey back in time, it begins with Masters meeting a drunken Stuart lying on a sidewalk in Cambridge, England, and leads through layers of hell…back through crimes and misdemeanors, prison and homelessness, suicide attempts, violence, drugs, juvenile halls and special schools–to expose the smiling, gregarious thirteen-year-old boy who was Stuart before his long, sprawling, dangerous fall. Shocking, inspiring, and hilarious by turns, Stuart: A Life Backwards is a writer’s quest to give voice to a man who, beneath his forbidding exterior, has a message for us all: that every life–even the most chaotic and disreputable–is a story worthy of being told.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Author: Dave Eggers
Publisher: Vintage Canada
ISBN: 0676973655
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
"I think this book is kind of malleable. I've never really wanted to put it away and be done with it forever -- the second I first 'finished' it, I wanted to dig back in and change everything around. So I'm looking forward to getting back into the text, and straightening and focusing and deleting. Most of all, I'm thrilled that Vintage will be letting me include all the cool chase scenes, previously censored." -- Dave Eggers The literary sensation of the year, a book that redefines both family and narrative for the twenty-first century. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is the moving memoir of a college senior who, in the space of five weeks, loses both of his parents to cancer and inherits his seven-year-old brother. Here is an exhilarating debut that manages to be simultaneously hilarious and wildly inventive as well as a deeply heartfelt story of the love that holds a family together. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is an instant classic that will be read in paperback for decades to come. PAPERBACK EDITION -- 15% MORE STAGGERING - Eggers has written 15,000 additional words for the Vintage Canada edition, including an entirely new appendix.

Texts from Bennett

Author: Mac Lethal
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1476706883
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Book Description
A family story for the twenty-first century, based on the phenomenally popular Texts from Bennett Tumblr blog, this epistolary novel chronicles the year that Bennett and the rest of his freeloading family moved into his cousin Mac's household. Hardworking Kansas City rapper Mac Lethal has a problem, and its name is Bennett. His wannabe gangsta cousin is seventeen, uses drugs and foul language, claims to be 13 percent black, and swears he speaks "da female language." (Strangely that last one sort of seems true.) But as different as they are, when Bennett and his mom lose their home, Mac’s got their backs. They’re family after all. Sure, it takes patience to live with the eternally smoked-out Bennett and the pill-popped Aunt Lily, but he can handle it. You know who can’t? Mac’s very pretty, very WASPy, very uptight girlfriend. So as his once-peaceful household gets completely crazy, Mac learns that wanna-be-Crips are thicker than water, that his little cousin—flawed, irreverent, and basically a Saturday morning cartoon gone horribly wrong—has become his mentor, and that he really has no idea what’s up with girls.

Reluctant Genius

Author: Charlotte Gray
Publisher: Skyhorse
ISBN: 1628721405
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 582

Book Description
The popular image of Alexander Graham Bell is that of an elderly American patriarch, memorable only for his paunch, his Santa Claus beard, and the invention of the telephone. In this magisterial reassessment based on thorough new research, acclaimed biographer Charlotte Gray reveals Bell’s wide-ranging passion for invention and delves into the private life that supported his genius. The child of a speech therapist and a deaf mother, and possessed of superbly acute hearing, Bell developed an early interest in sound. His understanding of how sound waves might relate to electrical waves enabled him to invent the “talking telegraph” be- fore his rivals, even as he undertook a tempestuous courtship of the woman who would become his wife and mainstay. In an intensely competitive age, Bell seemed to shun fame and fortune. Yet many of his innovations—electric heating, using light to transmit sound, electronic mail, composting toilets, the artificial lung—were far ahead of their time. His pioneering ideas about sound, flight, genetics, and even the engineering of complex structures such as stadium roofs still resonate today. This is an essential portrait of an American giant whose innovations revolutionized the modern world.

The Innovators

Author: Walter Isaacson
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1476708703
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 560

Book Description
Chronicles the lives and careers of the men and women responsible for the creation of the digital age, including Doug Englebart, Robert Noyce, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and more.

Chop Chop

Author: Simon Wroe
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0698136411
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 254

Book Description
Kirkus Review “Arch comedy . . . Dave Eggers channels Anthony Bourdain.” An outrageously funny and original debut set in the fast-paced and treacherous world of a restaurant kitchen Fresh out of university with big dreams, our narrator is determined to escape his past and lead the literary life in London. But soon he is two months behind on rent and forced to take a menial job in the kitchen of The Swan, a gastro-pub with haute cuisine aspirations. Mockingly called “Monocle” by his co-workers for a useless English lit degree, he is thrust into a brutal, chaotic world full of motley characters. There’s the lovably dim pastry chef Dibden; combative Ramilov, who spends a fair bit of time locked in the walk-in fridge for pissing people off; Racist Dave, about whom the less said the better; Camp Charles, the officious head waiter; and Harmony, the only woman in a workplace of raunchy, immature, angry, drug-fueled men. Worst of all is the head chef, Bob, who runs the kitchen with an iron fist and an alarming taste for cruelty. But Monocle’s past is never far away and soon an altogether darker tale unfolds. As the chefs’ dreams of overthrowing Bob become a reality, Monocle’s dead-beat father shows up at his door, asking for help. With The Swan struggling to stay afloat and Monocle’s father dredging up lingering questions from an unhappy childhood, Chop Chop accelerates toward its blackly hilarious, thrilling, and ruthless conclusion.