James Gleick: Isaac Newton (2004)

“Isaac Newton was born in a stone farmhouse in 1642, fatherless and unwanted by his mother. When he died in London in 1727 he was so renowned he was given a state funeral—an unheard-of honor for a subject whose achievements were in the realm of the intellect. During the years he was an irascible presence at Trinity College, Cambridge, Newton imagined properties of nature and gave them names—mass, gravity, velocity—things our science now takes for granted. Inspired by Aristotle, spurred on by Galileo’s discoveries and the philosophy of Descartes, Newton grasped the intangible and dared to take its measure, a leap of the mind unparalleled in his generation.

James Gleick, the author of Chaos and Genius, and one of the most acclaimed science writers of his generation, brings the reader into Newton’s reclusive life and provides startlingly clear explanations of the concepts that changed forever our perception of bodies, rest, and motion—ideas so basic to the twenty-first century, it can truly be said: We are all Newtonians.”

Publisher Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2004
Vintage Series
ISBN 1400032954, 9781400032952
288 pages

review (John Banville, The Guardian)

Publisher

EPUB

Luciano Chessa: Luigi Russolo, Futurist: Noise, Visual Arts, and the Occult (2012)

“Luigi Russolo (1885–1947)—painter, composer, builder of musical instruments, and first-hour member of the Italian Futurist movement—was a crucial figure in the evolution of twentieth-century aesthetics. As creator of the first systematic poetics of noise and inventor of what has been considered the first mechanical sound synthesizer, Russolo looms large in the development of twentieth-century music. In the first English language study of Russolo, Luciano Chessa emphasizes the futurist’s interest in the occult, showing it to be a leitmotif for his life and a foundation for his art of noises. Chessa shows that Russolo’s aesthetics of noise, and the machines he called the intonarumori, were intended to boost practitioners into higher states of spiritual consciousness. His analysis reveals a multifaceted man in whom the drive to keep up with the latest scientific trends coexisted with an embrace of the irrational, and a critique of materialism and positivism.”

Publisher University of California Press, 2012
An Ahmanson Foundation Book in the Humanities
ISBN 0520270630, 9780520270633
284 pages

Publisher

PDF
EPUB
See also Luigi Russolo’s The Art of Noises (1987)

Raja Shehadeh: Strangers in the House: Coming of Age in Occupied Palestine (2002/2009)

“Raja Shehadeh was born into a successful Palestinian family with a beautiful house overlooking the Mediterranean. When the state of Israel was formed in 1948 the family were driven out to the provincial town of Ramallah. There Shehadeh grew up in the shadow of his father, a leading civil rights lawyer. He vowed not to become involved in politics or law but inevitably did so and became an important activist himself.In 1985 his father was stabbed to death. The Israeli police failed to investigate the murder properly and Shehadeh, by then a lawyer, set about solving the crime that destroyed his family. InStrangers in the House, Shehadeh recounts his troubled and complex relationship with his father and his experience of exile – of being a stranger in his own land. It is a remarkable memoir that combines the personal and political to devastating effect.”

Originally published in 2002

English edition
Publisher Profile Books, London, 2009
ISBN 1846682509, 9781846682506
238 pages

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2020-9-27)