Books
-
Einstein. His Life and Universe, Walter Isaacson (ISBN 9780743264747, Simon & Schuster)
A ‘new’ biography of Einstein by Walter Isaacson came out in 2007. The first biography I read from Isaacson was the one of Steve Jobs which actually came out later, in 2011. I enjoyed the Steve Jobs biography and by looking for other books by Isaacson I came across this Einstein biography. I bought the…
-
Schrödinger’s kittens and the search for reality, John Gribbin (ISBN 9781857994025, Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
After reading In Search of Schrödinger’s cat by John Gribbin I decided to also read this sequel not really knowing what to expect. His first book is a more or less traditional explanation of quantum mechanics and its bizarre description of reality. Ever since its conception physicists and philosophers have been struggling with the interpretation…
-
Piet Vroon: From Bestselling Author to Tragic Story
I read this book a little while ago in October mainly because it was short and I was behind on my reading target for 2025. It is barely 50 pages thick and I read a couple of other books by Piet Vroon long ago that I liked very much. Unfortunately, the quality of the book…
-
2025 : My year in books
One nice thing about Goodreads is it makes your reading history easily accessible and it helps to continue reading with challenges and so on. It is a bit like Strava for readers. One nice feature is the setting of your yearly reading challenge and then a recap of the year in books read. I have…
-
The Five Ages of the Universe, Fred Adams, Greg Laughlin (ISBN 978-0-684-86576-8, Simon & Schuster)
I read this book a while ago. It came out in 1999 but I came across a reference to it in another book. This book is a ‘biography’ of the universe from the beginning with the big bang until its speculatvie end after 10150 years. It is based on our current understanding of the laws…
-
In Praise of Good Bookstores, Jeff Deutsch (ISBN 978-0691207766, Princeton University Press)
This book was a tip from the book reviewers in the newspaper I read. And it is clear why book lovers like this book. Written by a former bookstore manager it is a basically long tribute to the bookstore, elaborating why it is important that we as a society ensure they survive. If you love…
-
Selling Second-Hand Books: My First Experience with BoekenBalie
I had a long weekend free and decided to complete my library dabase. In the process I discovered a couple of books I have 2 copies of. Some time ago we were discussing with friends about buying and selling second hand books and they were using BoekenBalie because it is an easy process to sell…
-
Evariste Galois. 1811-1832, Laura Toti Rigatelli (ISBN 978-3-7643-5410-7, Birkhäuser)
I found this biography of Evariste Galois after reading about him in Eric Temple Bell’s Men of Mathematics. It is part of the Vita Mathematica series of the publisher with biographies of mathematicians, most of them published in German. The author is an Italian professor in mathematics with a special interest in the history of…
-
Richard Feynman. A Life in Science, John Gribbin and Mary Gribbin (ISBN 978-1-78578-372-2, Iconbooks)
During my physics studies at university I became a fan of Feynman. His path integral formulation of quantum mechanics was a revelation after years of plodding through the standard formalisms by Heisenberg and Schrödinger and the mists surrounding the question what it all meant physically. Especially the fact that this approach was also applicable to…
-
Exercised. Why something we never evolved to do is healthy and rewarding, Daniel E. Lieberman (ISBN 978-0-525-43478-8, Vintage Books)
I heard about this book in a podcast about running. 2 journalists discussed their own running habits and struggles and one of them mentioned this book as a good one to read. I definitely found it interesting as it gives insights from an evolutionary perspective to why so many people struggle to exercise even though…
Response 418 