From our recent correspondence:
I’ll definitely suggest Gino Segre’s Faust in Copenhagen, which is the story of how quantum physics came to be, through several key conferences and meetings in Copenhagen put together by Niels Bohr. The younger members of the group (later major physics heavyweights) put on a skit at the end of each one to entertain (and spoof) the elders (at the time the leaders in the field) and, in the central conference described here, they base the skit on Goethe’s Faust, a play whose text was relatively well known to all the participants.
Gino Segre is a physicist himself. He is not trying to teach physics in this book, but the history of science at a fascinating time, and he does it well. It’s a riveting narrative, and a relatively little-known story with an international cast of characters.
I also highly recommend the collected stories of Cordwainer Smith, the book titled The Rediscovery of Man. Not only is this the complete collection of Cordwainer Smith’s stories, it has an excellent introduction to his life and his fiction. Cordwainer Smith is the pseudonym of the East Asian scholar and professor Paul Linebarger, an expert in and teacher of East Asian studies and related subjects to many of our leading diplomats for many years. In fact, in Barbara Tuchman‘s book Stilwell and the American Experience in China, Paul Linebarger is represented in the bibliography. He was born in China of US parents and was a godson to Sun Yat-Sen. His family moved to France and Germany while he was still a child so that he grew up speaking several languages; his writing shows his remarkable knowledge of many languages and cultures. This is only one of the reasons I like him so much: he has such a wide view of the world and its people and their cultures. We need a wider view of each other on this planet, I firmly believe. And he can write superbly good stories, in a unique voice. In addition to these stories, he has a hugely entertaining novel, Norstrilia, well worth finding and reading. Once you read him, you will never forget him.
A quick search reveals that abebooks.com has a wide selection of copies of all the books mentioned here.. And of course a worldcat.org search may reveal copies in libraries near you, free for the borrowing.
