Konrad Zuse: Der Computer – Mein Lebenswerk, 4th ed. (1970/2007) [German]

“Der erste funktionsfähige Computer wurde von Konrad Zuse gebaut. Er war 1941 betriebsbereit. Der Erfinder dieser ersten vollautomatischen, programmgesteuerten, frei programmierbaren, in binärer Gleitpunktzahlrechnung arbeitenden Rechenanlage wäre am 22. Juni 2010 hundert Jahre alt geworden. In diesem Buch erzählt er die Geschichte seines Lebens, das wie kaum ein anderes mit der Geschichte der bedeutendsten technischen Entwicklung seines Jahrhunderts verbunden ist – einer Entwicklung, die mit der „Abneigung“ des Bauingenieurstudenten Zuse gegen die statischen Rechnungen begonnen hat…”

First published by Moderne Industrie, 1970
Publisher Springer, 2007
ISBN 3540731393, 9783540731399
218 pages

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Nancy Stout: One Day in December: Celia Sánchez and the Cuban Revolution (2013)

Celia Sánchez is the missing actor of the Cuban Revolution. Although not as well known in the English-speaking world as Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, Sánchez played a pivotal role in launching the revolution and administering the revolutionary state. She joined the clandestine 26th of July Movement and went on to choose the landing site of the Granma and fight with the rebels in the Sierra Maestra. She collected the documents that would form the official archives of the revolution, and, after its victory, launched numerous projects that enriched the lives of many Cubans, from parks to literacy programs to helping develop the Cohiba cigar brand. All the while, she maintained a close relationship with Fidel Castro that lasted until her death in 1980.

The product of ten years of original research, this biography draws on interviews with Sánchez’s friends, family, and comrades in the rebel army, along with countless letters and documents. Biographer Nancy Stout was initially barred from the official archives, but, in a remarkable twist, was granted access by Fidel Castro himself, impressed as he was with Stout’s project and aware that Sánchez deserved a worthy biography. This is the extraordinary story of an extraordinary woman who exemplified the very best values of the Cuban Revolution: selfless dedication to the people, courage in the face of grave danger, and the desire to transform society.

With a Foreword by Alice Walker
Publisher Monthly Review Press, 2013
ISBN 1583673172, 9781583673171
400 pages

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Ray Monk: Inside the Centre: The Life of J. Robert Oppenheimer (2012)

J. Robert Oppenheimer is among the most contentious and important figures of the twentieth century. As head of the Los Alamos Laboratory, he oversaw the successful effort to beat the Nazis to develop the first atomic bomb – a breakthrough which was to have eternal ramifications for mankind, and made Oppenheimer the ‘father of the Bomb’.

Oppenheimer was a man of diverse interests and phenomenal intellectual attributes. His talent and drive allowed him as a young scientist to enter a community peopled by the great names of twentieth-century physics – men such as Bohr, Born, Dirac and Einstein – and to play a role in the laboratories and classrooms where the world was being changed forever.

But Oppenheimer’s was not a simple story of assimilation, scientific success and world fame. A complicated and fragile personality, the implications of the discoveries at Los Alamos were to weigh heavily upon him. Having formed suspicious connections in the 1930s, in the wake of the Allied victory in World War Two, Oppenheimer’s attempts to resist the escalation of the Cold War arms race would lead many to question his loyalties – and set him on a collision course with Senator Joseph McCarthy and his witch hunters.

As with Ray Monk’s peerless biographies of Wittgenstein and Bertrand Russell, Inside the Centre is a work of towering scholarship. A story of discovery, secrecy, impossible choices and unimaginable destruction, it goes deeper than any previous work in revealing the motivations and complexities of this most brilliant and divisive of men.

Publisher Jonathan Cape, an imprint of Random House, London, 2012
ISBN 022406262X, 9780224062626
818 pages

review (Miranda Carter, The Telegraph)
review (John Gray, Literary Review)
review (Martin Underwood, The British Journal for the History of Science)

Oppenheimer’s life in 600 tweets (?!)
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