“Alan Turing: The Enigma,” by Andrew Hodges. Now subtitled “The Book that inspired the film The Imitation Game.” 736 pages, illustrated. Turing was credited with his invaluable help in solving codes to end World War II and creating the first computer. His biographer succeeds in giving us a detailed portrait of the enigmatic scientist, along with an account of his groundbreaking work. A good long read.
“Becoming Mona Lisa: The Making of a Global Icon,” by Donald Sassoon, 337 pages, illustrated. A well-documented history of DaVinci’s portrait and how it became the phenomenally well-known work of art it is today. Color reproductions show its antecedents and the changes DaVinci wrought in his masterpiece, which he kept with him throughout his life.
“The David Foster Wallace Reader,” 963 pages of this author’s brilliant work, the offerings of a genius and perhaps idiot-savant whose depth of language skills were put into service as part of the contributors to “The American Heritage Dictionary.” Long sections of his novel, “Infinite Jest,” along with his last, “The Pale King,” are included. Reading the non-fiction entries may lead you to his other collections, “Consider the Lobster” or “Both Flesh and Not,” which contain articles written for Rolling Stone and for Harper’s. Critic Michiko Kakutani has called him “A writer of virtuosic talents who can seemingly do anything.” He is always both challenging and rewarding.
“The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill Alone, 1932-1940,” by William Manchester, 756 pages, illustrated. This is volume two of the three-volume history of England’s prime minister just as Hitler is making his earliest moves into the subjugation of Europe and thereby terrifying every country around him. Churchill’s accurate predictions were fully disregarded by his countrymen, fully cowed by their memory of the first war which had decimated the population. Manchester gives a vivid and moving account of each detail of the years spent in frustrated attempts to awaken the complacent English. A fully absorbing reading experience.
