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.

The Genius in my Basement

Author: Alexander Masters
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
ISBN: 0007445261
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 336

Book Description
An intimate portrait of an everyday genius.

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.

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.

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.

All Men of Genius

Author: Lev AC Rosen
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1429995017
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 395

Book Description
A comedic Steampunk sensation inspired by both Shakespeare's Twelfth Night and Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, All Men of Genius follows Violet Adams as she disguises herself as her twin brother to gain entry to Victorian London's most prestigious scientific academy, and once there, encounters blackmail, mystery, and love. Violet Adams wants to attend Illyria College, a widely renowned school for the most brilliant up-and-coming scientific minds, founded by the late Duke Illyria, the greatest scientist of the Victorian Age. The school is run by his son, Ernest, who has held to his father's policy that the small, exclusive college remain male-only. Violet sees her opportunity when her father departs for America. She disguises herself as her twin brother, Ashton, and gains entry. But keeping the secret of her sex won't be easy, not with her friend Jack's constant habit of pulling pranks, and especially not when the duke's young ward, Cecily, starts to develop feelings for Violet's alter ego, "Ashton." Not to mention blackmail, mysterious killer automata, and the way Violet's pulse quickens whenever the young duke, Ernest (who has a secret past of his own), speaks to her. She soon realizes that it's not just keeping her secret until the end of the year faire she has to worry about: it's surviving that long. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

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.

A Well-Ordered Thing

Author: Michael D. Gordin
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691184429
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 386

Book Description
Dmitrii Mendeleev (1834–1907) is a name we recognize, but perhaps only as the creator of the periodic table of elements. Generally, little else has been known about him. A Well-Ordered Thing is an authoritative biography of Mendeleev that draws a multifaceted portrait of his life for the first time. As Michael Gordin reveals, Mendeleev was not only a luminary in the history of science, he was also an astonishingly wide-ranging political and cultural figure. From his attack on Spiritualism to his failed voyage to the Arctic and his near-mythical hot-air balloon trip, this is the story of an extraordinary maverick. The ideals that shaped his work outside science also led Mendeleev to order the elements and, eventually, to engineer one of the most fascinating scientific developments of the nineteenth century. A Well-Ordered Thing is a classic work that tells the story of one of the world’s most important minds.

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.