Labatut’s book defies categorization. Is it a novel? Is it philosophy? Is it narrative non-fiction? It’s somehow all the above.
Delving into the mysteries of humanity’s drive to understand nature, Labatut explores a handful of real personalities from the twentieth century as they struggled against the abyss toward which their very capacity to reason pushed them.
Profound, funny, absurd, and gorgeously written, When We Cease to Understand the World awakens a sense of wonder at the complexity of the universe and the power of the human intellects that grapple with it.
When We Cease to Understand the World shows us great minds striking out into dangerous, uncharted terrain.
Fritz Haber, Alexander Grothendieck, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schroedinger: these are among the luminaries into whose troubled minds we are thrust as they grapple with the most profound questions of existence. They have strokes of unparalleled genius, they alienate friends and lovers, they descend into isolated states of madness. Some of their discoveries revolutionise our world for the better; others pave the way to chaos and unimaginable suffering. The lines are never clear.
At breakneck pace and with wondrous detail, Benjamin Labatut uses the…
It’s impossible to know where you are going when you start this book and impossible not to have taken the path once you get to the end.
That’s the incredible power of Doerr’s intricate, tender, magisterial braid of seemingly unconnected stories over millennia. The characters are powerfully drawn, and you want to stay with them despite the tragedies they encounter. A truly magical read.
On the New York Times bestseller list for over 20 weeks * A New York Times Notable Book * A National Book Award Finalist * Named a Best Book of the Year by Fresh Air, Time, Entertainment Weekly, Associated Press, and many more
“If you’re looking for a superb novel, look no further.” —The Washington Post
From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of All the Light We Cannot See, comes the instant New York Times bestseller that is a “wildly inventive, a humane and uplifting book for adults that’s infused with the magic of childhood reading experiences” (The New York Times…
Few physicists are more immersed in the history of philosophy, religion, and culture than Marcelo Gleiser. A brilliant cosmologist and Templeton award winner with multiple books exploring the biggest questions in physics and spirituality, Gleiser’s brand new book is, as its subtitle suggests, also a manifesto.
No less than, our very future depends on a renewed understanding of the extraordinary and utterly unique nature of intelligent life and of the special place it holds in the universe.
An award-winning astronomer and physicist's spellbinding and urgent call for a new Enlightenment and the recognition of the preciousness of life using reason and curiosity-the foundations of science-to study, nurture, and ultimately preserve humanity as we face the existential crisis of climate change.
Since Copernicus, humanity has increasingly seen itself as adrift, an insignificant speck within a large, cold universe. Brazilian physicist, astronomer, and winner of the 2019 Templeton Prize Marcelo Gleiser argues that it is because we have lost the spark of the Enlightenment that has guided human development over the past several centuries. While some scientific efforts have…
A poet, a physicist, and a philosopher explored the greatest enigmas in the universe—the nature of free will, the strange fabric of the cosmos, the true limits of the mind—and each, in their own way, uncovered a revelatory truth about our place in the world
Through fiction, science, and philosophy, the work of these three thinkers coalesced around the powerful, haunting fact that there is an irreconcilable difference between reality “out there” and reality as we experience it. Out of this profound truth comes a multitude of galvanizing ideas: the notion of selfhood, free will, and purpose in human life; the roots of morality, aesthetics, and reason; and the origins and nature of the cosmos itself.
