{"title":"Paul Hoffman","description":"Paul Hoffman was president of Encyclopedia Britannica and editor-in-chief of Discover, and is the author of The Man Who Loved Only Numbers and The Wings of Madness. He is the winner of the first National Magazine Award for Feature Writing, and his work has appeared in the New Yorker, Time, and Atlantic Monthly. He is the President and CEO of the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, NJ.","products":[{"product_id":"the-man-who-loved-only-numbers-the-story-of-paul-erdos-and-the-search-for-mathematical-truth-paperback","title":"The Man Who Loved Only Numbers: The Story of Paul Erdos and the Search for Mathematical Truth - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"A funny, marvelously readable portrait of one of the most brilliant and eccentric men in history.\" --\u003ci\u003eThe Seattle Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Paul Erdos was an amazing and prolific mathematician whose life as a world-wandering numerical nomad was legendary. He published almost 1500 scholarly papers before his death in 1996, and he probably thought more about math problems than anyone in history. Like a traveling salesman offering his thoughts as wares, Erdos would show up on the doorstep of one mathematician or another and announce, \"My brain is open.\" After working through a problem, he'd move on to the next place, the next solution. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Hoffman's book, like Sylvia Nasar's biography of John Nash, \u003ci\u003eA Beautiful Mind\u003c\/i\u003e, reveals a genius's life that transcended the merely quirky. But Erdos's brand of madness was joyful, unlike Nash's despairing schizophrenia. Erdos never tried to dilute his obsessive passion for numbers with ordinary emotional interactions, thus avoiding hurting the people around him, as Nash did. Oliver Sacks writes of Erdos: \"A mathematical genius of the first order, Paul Erdos was totally obsessed with his subject--he thought and wrote mathematics for nineteen hours a day until the day he died. He traveled constantly, living out of a plastic bag, and had no interest in food, sex, companionship, art--all that is usually indispensable to a human life.\" \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Man Who Loved Only Numbers\u003c\/i\u003e is easy to love, despite his strangeness. It's hard not to have affection for someone who referred to children as \"epsilons,\" from the Greek letter used to represent small quantities in mathematics; a man whose epitaph for himself read, \"Finally I am becoming stupider no more\"; and whose only really necessary tool to do his work was a quiet and open mind. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Hoffman, who followed and spoke with Erdos over the last 10 years of his life, introduces us to an undeniably odd, yet pure and joyful, man who loved numbers more than he loved God--whom he referred to as SF, for Supreme Fascist. He was often misunderstood, and he certainly annoyed people sometimes, but Paul Erdos is no doubt missed. --Therese Littleton","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51376777429215,"sku":"9780786884063","price":19.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/62avC_w1PT9780786884063.webp?v=1789225310"},{"product_id":"wings-of-madness-alberto-santos-dumont-and-the-invention-of-flight-hardcover","title":"Wings of Madness: Alberto Santos-Dumont and the Invention of Flight - Hardcover","description":"\u003cp\u003eOn the eve of the centennial of the Wright brothers' historic flights at Kitty Hawk, a new generation will learn about the other man who was once hailed worldwide as the conqueror of the air--Alberto Santos-Dumont. Because the Wright brothers worked in secrecy, word of their first flights had not reached Europe when Santos-Dumont took to the skies in 1906. The dashing, impeccably dressed inventor entertained Paris with his airborne antics--barhopping in a little dirigible that he tied to lampposts, circling above crowds around the Eiffel Tower, and crashing into rooftops. A man celebrated, even pursued by the press in Paris, London, and New York, Santos-Dumont dined regularly with the Cartiers, the Rothschilds, and the Roosevelts. But beneath his lively public exterior, Santos-Dumont was a frenzied genius tortured by the weight of his own creation.\u003ci\u003eWings of Madness\u003c\/i\u003e chronicles the science and history of early aviation and offers a fascinating glimpse into the mind of an extraordinary and tormented man, vividly depicting the sights and sounds of turn-of-the-century Paris. It is a book that will do for aviation what \u003ci\u003eThe Man Who Loved Only Numbers\u003c\/i\u003e did for mathematics.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51397099225311,"sku":"9780786866595","price":30.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/OBfWdH1_tC9780786866595.webp?v=1789463516"},{"product_id":"the-left-hand-of-god-paperback","title":"The Left Hand of God - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"Writers like Hoffman are too rare. This wonderful book gripped me from the first chapter and dropped me days later, dazed and grinning to myself.\" -Conn Iggulden, \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eThe Dangerous Book for Boys\u003c\/i\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Raised from early childhood in the Redeemer Sanctuary, the stronghold of a secretive sect of warrior monks, Thomas Cale has known only deprivation, punishment, and grueling training. When he escsapes to the outside world, Cale learns that his embittered heart is still capable of loving- and breaking. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e But the Redeemers won't accept the defection of their prized pupil without a fight...","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51402258514143,"sku":"9780451231888","price":24.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/2LheFJEwK29780451231888.webp?v=1789528293"}],"url":"https:\/\/blackandbarhe.com\/collections\/paul-hoffman.oembed","provider":"Black \u0026 Barhe Bookstore","version":"1.0","type":"link"}