<![CDATA[A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines]]>

false <![CDATA[A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166734292m/16670.jpg 16670 2 In this remarkable work of fiction, astrophysicist Janna Levin reimagines the lives of two of the most important and influential minds of our time. The narrator is a scientist herself, a physicist obsessed with Kurt Gödel, the greatest logician of many centuries, and with Alan Turing, the extraordinary mathematician, breaker of the Enigma Code during World War II. “They are both brilliantly original and outsiders,” the narrator tells us. “They are both besotted with mathematics. But for all their devotion, mathematics is indifferent, unaltered by any of their dramas . . . Against indifference, I want to tell their stories.” Which she does in a haunting, incantatory voice, the two lives unfolding in parallel narratives that overlap in the magnitude of each man’s achievement and demise: Gödel, delusional and paranoid, would starve himself to death; Turing, arrested for homosexual activities, would be driven to suicide. And they meet as well in the narrator’s mind, where facts are interwoven with her desire and determination to find meaning in the maze of their stories: two men devoted to truth of the highest abstract nature, yet unable to grasp the mundane truths of their own lives. A unique amalgam of luminous imagination and richly evoked historic character and event—A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines is a story about the pursuit of truth and its effect on the lives of two men. A story of genius and madness, incredible yet true. 457871 2006 A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines total:234|5:41|4:79|3:75|2:36|1:3| 234 821 406 66 3 0 false false Fri Mar 20 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun Mar 22 09:13:38 -0700 2009 Sun Mar 22 09:26:52 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Mon Mar 16 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Mar 14 16:36:43 -0700 2009 Mon Mar 16 19:17:21 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 0 true false Tue Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun Sep 06 19:59:06 -0700 2009 Sun Sep 13 15:36:56 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 1 false false Thu Nov 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Wed Oct 03 20:57:10 -0700 2007 Sat Dec 08 14:30:16 -0800 2007 Janna Levin shines a light at a potpourri of historic and imagined scenarios that add up to a twin portrait of miserable men that thr...more...]]> 4 0 false false Mon Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Jun 15 18:04:56 -0700 2009 Thu Jun 25 21:03:26 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Sun Jul 05 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Jun 29 19:12:32 -0700 2009 Sun Jul 05 09:29:20 -0700 2009 more...]]> 0 1 false false Tue Nov 25 14:58:27 -0800 2008 Tue Nov 25 15:01:49 -0800 2008 3 0 false false Tue Mar 10 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Feb 23 11:46:19 -0800 2009 Tue Mar 10 09:13:27 -0700 2009 1 more...]]> 4 0 false false Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Fri Feb 06 13:17:37 -0800 2009 Fri Feb 06 13:25:48 -0800 2009
Levin succeeds in st...more...]]> 2 0 false false Fri Apr 24 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri Apr 24 07:32:58 -0700 2009 Fri Apr 24 07:42:26 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Sun Jul 26 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat May 02 09:36:28 -0700 2009 Sun Jul 26 13:58:18 -0700 2009 1 A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines floats through the lives of Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing like a remembered dream. Janna Levin surrealistically bookends various episodes with her own contemplations. These intermissions are built on the images of her life as much as Gödel’s and Turing’s. She paints...more...]]> 4 0 false false Fri May 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Feb 16 10:11:30 -0800 2009 Mon May 25 15:53:21 -0700 2009 This intriguing book is a novel of and about ideas--its characters' and its author's. I don't know anything at all about mathematics, but reading MADMAN made me understand something simple that never occurred to me before: there are people out there who love numbers as intensely as others (inc...more...]]> 2 0 false false Mon Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Thu Sep 11 19:15:01 -0700 2008 Tue Oct 14 20:34:40 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 1 false false Fri Jul 25 00:08:22 -0700 2008 Fri Aug 29 23:54:40 -0700 2008
Sorry....completely besides the point.

What I really enjoyed about this work was the illumination of Godel's theorems, nicely wrapped up and explicated within a fictional narrative that also ties in Turing a...more...]]> 3 0 false false Fri Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Wed Nov 14 07:58:10 -0800 2007 Wed Nov 14 08:09:35 -0800 2007 more...]]> 4 0 false false Mon Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Fri Nov 02 09:37:31 -0700 2007 Fri Nov 02 09:52:17 -0700 2007 more...]]> 3 0 false false Sat Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Tue Sep 25 11:52:55 -0700 2007 Mon Oct 01 10:16:43 -0700 2007 more...]]> 3 0 false false Thu Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Mon Jun 04 18:31:50 -0700 2007 Mon Jun 04 18:33:10 -0700 2007 more...]]> 2 0 false false Fri May 15 07:38:28 -0700 2009 Fri May 15 07:46:48 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Sat Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Sep 22 11:54:59 -0700 2009 Tue Sep 22 12:03:54 -0700 2009 more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=16670