Search results for ""Author John Eidinow""

Many of the academic refugees Esther Simpson helped rescue are well remembered. But who was she and why has history forgotten her?This is the story of Esther Simpson, a woman whose dedication to the cause of freedom in science and learning left an indelible mark on the cultural and intellectual landscape of the modern world.Esther Simpson - Tess to her friends - devoted her life to resettling academic refugees, whom she thought of as her family. By the end of her life, Simpson could count among her 'children' sixteen Nobel Prize winners, eighteen Knights, seventy-four fellows of the Royal Society, thirty-four fellows of the British Academy. Her 'children' made a major contribution to Allied victory in World War Two.From a humble upbringing in Leeds to Russian immigrant parents, Simpson took on secretarial roles that saw her move to Paris, Vienna and Geneva. But when Hitler assumed power in 1933, she took a job in London at the Academic Assistance Council, newly set up to rescue displaced German scholars, and found her lifelong calling.For a woman who befriended so many and such eminent 'children', surprisingly little is known of her. This book is a study of Esther Simpson: who she was and how she lived, what moved her to take up and never to relinquish her calling, her impact on the world, and the historical context that helped shape her achievements.

Read more less

On 25 October 1946, in a crowded room in Cambridge, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper came face to face for the first and only time. The encounter lasted only ten minutes, and did not go well. Almost immediately, rumours started to spread around the world that the two philosophers had come to blows, armed with red-hot pokers. But what really happened? Wittgenstein's Poker engagingly winds together philosophy, history and biography into a compelling piece of detective work. It ranges from the place of assimilated Jews in fin-de-siècle Vienna, to what happens to memory under stress, to a vivid portrait of Cambridge and its eccentric set of philosophy dons, including Bertrand Russell (who acted as umpire during the altercation). At the centre of the story stand the philosophers themselves, proud, irascible, larger than life, and spoiling for a fight.'Those ten minutes shook the world of Western philosophy literally to its foundations . . . Edmonds and Eidinow have a very good story to tell, and they tell it wonderfully well.' Irish Times'A meaty, exceedingly well-researched and engaging book. In its dramatic readability Wittgenstein's Poker brings to mind Simon Winchester's The Professor and the Madman; in the depth and breadth of its scholarship it evokes Carl Schorske's Fin-de-siècle Vienna . . . a marvel of passionate journalism.' San Francisco Chronicle

Read more less

Jean-Jacques Rousseau - philosopher, novelist, composer, educationist, political provocateur - was on the run. He was fleeing intolerance, persecution, and enemies who proclaimed him a madman, dangerous to society. David Hume, the foremost philosopher in the English language, universally praised as a model of decency, came to his aid. He brought Rousseau and his beloved little dog Sultan to England. And then it all went horribly wrong. In Rousseau's Dog, David Edmonds and John Eidinow bring their narrative verve to the bitter quarrel that turned these two Enlightenment giants into mortal foes. And it is a very human story of compassion, treachery, anger and revenge.

Read more less

PERFECT FOR FANS OF NETFLIX'S THE QUEEN'S GAMBIT'Gripping.' SUNDAY TIMES'Pure drama.'INDEPENDENT'Compelling.'NEW YORK TIMESBobby Fischer Goes to War by David Edmonds and John Eidinow details the occasion when Bobby Fischer met Boris Spassky in one of the most thrilling and politically charged chess matches of all time.For decades, the USSR had dominated world chess. Evidence, according to Moscow, of the superiority of the Soviet system. But in 1972 along came the American, Bobby Fischer: insolent, arrogant, abusive, vain, greedy, vulgar, bigoted, paranoid and obsessive - and apparently unstoppable.Against him was Boris Spassky: complex, sensitive, the most un-Soviet of champions. As the authors reveal, when Spassky began to lose, the KGB decided to step in. . .

Read more less