Items22The creator’s order
  1. 1Steve Jobs (2011)Steve Jobs (2011) 8.4/10 on Open LibraryPublished Jan 1, 2011Walter Isaacson interviewed Steve Jobs and people who had worked with him, including some who had fallen out with him. Their accounts put his insistence on refining a product beside the experience of taking direction from him. Read this for an account of how a design judgment became a company…0
  2. 2Frida, a biography of Frida Kahlo (1983)Frida, a biography of Frida Kahlo (1983)Published Jan 1, 1983Hayden Herrera reads Frida Kahlo’s paintings alongside the bodily pain and complicated relationships that accompanied her work. The self-portraits let a reader see how Kahlo chose to present herself, even as the biography tells the parts of her life a picture could leave ambiguous. Choose it to…0
  3. 3Alan Turing (1983)Alan Turing (1983) 8.2/10 on Open LibraryPublished Jan 1, 1983Andrew Hodges brings Alan Turing’s ideas about computation together with his wartime codebreaking and his later conviction for gross indecency under laws that criminalized sex between men. Read it for how public institutions shaped both his work and the life he could lead.0
  4. 4Dearie (2012)Dearie (2012)Published Jan 1, 2012Bob Spitz follows Julia Child from learning French cooking to teaching it on American television. The reader sees an unfamiliar craft become something she can explain in a home kitchen. Choose it for the years of training behind a public voice that made room for mistakes and made serious…0
  5. 5The Invention of Nature (2015)The Invention of Nature (2015) 8.5/10 on Open LibraryPublished Jan 1, 2015Andrea Wulf follows Alexander von Humboldt through the journeys and comparisons that helped him think of nature as a connected whole. Climbing Chimborazo becomes an occasion to notice patterns among conditions and plant life. Choose it for the making of an idea, including the effort it took to make…0
  6. 6American Prometheus (2005)American Prometheus (2005) 7.8/10 on Open LibraryPublished Jan 1, 2005Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin follow J. Robert Oppenheimer from scientific leadership during the war to the 1954 hearing that stripped his security clearance. Their account gives a reader time to see how a reputation for judgment in one setting could be used against him in another. Choose it for…0
  7. 7The Man Who Knew Infinity (1991)The Man Who Knew Infinity (1991) 6.0/10 on Open LibraryPublished Jan 1, 1991Robert Kanigel follows Srinivasa Ramanujan from India to Cambridge, where his partnership with G. H. Hardy brought very different mathematical training and habits into contact. Read it for the letters and institutional decisions that helped make the partnership possible, and for a reminder of how…0
  8. 8Becoming Dr. Seuss (2019)Becoming Dr. Seuss (2019)Published Jan 1, 2019Brian Jay Jones follows Theodor Geisel from advertising and wartime cartoons to the playful language of his children’s books. The route puts the artist’s public influence in view before he was known as a favorite of young readers. Choose it to see how skills carried from one kind of work into…0
  9. 9Tesla - Inventor of the Electrical Age (2015)Tesla - Inventor of the Electrical Age (2015)Published Jan 1, 2015W. Bernard Carlson treats Nikola Tesla as both an inventor and a showman who had to sell ideas to other people. The account of alternating-current power sets the work beside Tesla’s talent for making potential backers imagine its possibilities. Choose it if you want to understand what happens…0
  10. 10A Beautiful Mind (1998)A Beautiful Mind (1998) 6.5/10 on Open LibraryPublished Jan 1, 1998Sylvia Nasar puts John Nash’s work in game theory in the company of the people who saw him at Princeton and later helped keep him connected to mathematics. Alicia Nash is part of that account, as are colleagues who had to make room for an unconventional thinker. Read it for a close look at the…0