I liked the book, it uses an interesting storytelling mechanism of telling each chapter through the lens of a different historical character (his mom, his wife, friends, etc). But I think Labatut sacrificed voice and tone a little bit (there weren’t too many elements to differentiate between each narrator).
I haven't read MANIAC (yet) but a few years back I was trying to find a good biography of Von Neumann and there are not many; the problem is that he's really difficult to cover comprehensively, even for science historians, because he impacted so many areas of science that you'd practically have to be a von Neumann to create a biography of von Neumann. One could probably get a rough idea of his intelligence by how many science historians it would take to create a comprehensive biography which explains his life and work to a reasonably intelligent layman.
It's less of a strict biography and more of a fictionalized story involving Von Neumann and his wife. As far as I can recall from my reading it was pretty historically accurate though.
there are so many extraordinary things about von Neumann that there seems little need to write a fictionalized account of his life. How is the reader to know what is real and what is fiction?
I liked the book, it uses an interesting storytelling mechanism of telling each chapter through the lens of a different historical character (his mom, his wife, friends, etc). But I think Labatut sacrificed voice and tone a little bit (there weren’t too many elements to differentiate between each narrator).
I enjoyed this one a lot.
For those who've read other books on von Neumann, do you think The MANIAC is a reasonable summary?
I haven't read MANIAC (yet) but a few years back I was trying to find a good biography of Von Neumann and there are not many; the problem is that he's really difficult to cover comprehensively, even for science historians, because he impacted so many areas of science that you'd practically have to be a von Neumann to create a biography of von Neumann. One could probably get a rough idea of his intelligence by how many science historians it would take to create a comprehensive biography which explains his life and work to a reasonably intelligent layman.
It's less of a strict biography and more of a fictionalized story involving Von Neumann and his wife. As far as I can recall from my reading it was pretty historically accurate though.
there are so many extraordinary things about von Neumann that there seems little need to write a fictionalized account of his life. How is the reader to know what is real and what is fiction?