Robert Kanigel – författare

On an Irish Island is a love letter to a vanished way of life, in which Robert Kanigel, the highly praised author of The Man Who Knew Infinity and The One Best Way, tells the story of the Great Blasket, a wildly beautiful island off the west coast of Ireland, renowned during the early twentieth century for the rich communal life of its residents and the unadulterated Irish they spoke. With the Irish language vanishing all through the rest of Ireland, the Great Blasket became a magnet for scholars and writers drawn there during the Gaelic renaissance—and the scene for a memorable clash of cultures between modern life and an older, sometimes sweeter world slipping away.   Kanigel introduces us to the playwright John Millington Synge, some of whose characters in The Playboy of the Western World, were inspired by his time on the island; Carl Marstrander, a Norwegian linguist who gave his place on Norway’s Olympic team for a summer on the Blasket; Marie-Louise Sjoestedt, a Celtic studies scholar fresh from the Sorbonne; and central to the story, George Thomson, a British classicist whose involvement with the island and its people we follow from his first visit as a twenty-year-old to the end of his life.   On the island, they met a colorful coterie of men and women with whom they formed lifelong and life-changing friendships. There’s Tomás O’Crohan, a stoic fisherman, one of the few islanders who could read and write Irish, who tutored many of the incomers in the language’s formidable intricacies and became the Blasket’s first published writer; Maurice O’Sullivan, a good-natured prankster and teller of stories, whose memoir, Twenty Years A-Growing, became an Irish classic; and Peig Sayers, whose endless repertoire of earthy tales left listeners spellbound.   As we get to know these men and women, we become immersed in the vivid culture of the islanders, their hard lives of fishing and farming matched by their love of singing, dancing, and talk. Yet, sadly, we watch them leave the island, the village becoming uninhabited by 1953. The story of the Great Blasket is one of struggle—between the call of modernity and the tug of Ireland’s ancient ways, between the promise of emigration and the peculiar warmth of island life amid its physical isolation. But ultimately it is a tribute to the strength and beauty of a people who, tucked away from the rest of civilization, kept alive a nation’s past, and to the newcomers and islanders alike who brought the island’s remarkable story to the larger world.

The first major biography of the irrepressible woman who changed the way we view and live in cities, and whose influence can still be felt in any discussion of urban planning to this day. Eyes on the Street is a revelation of the phenomenal woman who raised three children, wrote seven groundbreaking books, saved neighborhoods, stopped expressways, was arrested twice, and engaged at home and on the streets in thousands of debates--all of which she won. Here is the child who challenged her third-grade teacher; the high school poet; the journalist who honed her writing skills at Iron Age, Architectural Forum, Fortune, and other outlets, while amassing the knowledge she would draw upon to write her most famous book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Here, too, is the activist who helped lead an ultimately successful protest against Robert Moses''s proposed expressway through her beloved Greenwich Village; and who, in order to keep her sons out of the Vietnam War, moved to Canada, where she became as well known and admired as she was in the United States.From the Hardcover edition.

The Man Who Knew Infinity is the true story of a friendship between Srinivasa Ramanujan and G.H. Hardy that forever changed mathematics. In 1913, a young unschooled Indian clerk wrote a letter to G H Hardy, begging the pre-eminent English mathematician's opinion on several ideas he had about numbers. Realising the letter was the work of a genius, Hardy arranged for Srinivasa Ramanujan to come to England. Thus began one of the most improbable and productive collaborations ever chronicled.With a passion for rich and evocative detail, Robert Kanigel takes us from the temples and slums of Madras to the courts and chapels of Cambridge University, where the devout Hindu Ramanujan, 'the Prince of Intuition,' tested his brilliant theories alongside the sophisticated and eccentric Hardy, 'the Apostle of Proof'. In time, Ramanujan's creative intensity took its toll: he died at the age of thirty-two and left behind a magical and inspired legacy that is still being plumbed for its secrets today.Adapted into a film in 2016 starring Dev Patel, Jeremy Irons, Stephen Fry, Toby Jones and Devika Bhise.

Robert Kanigel takes us into the heady world of a remarkable group of scientists working at the National Institutes of Health and the Johns Hopkins University: a dynasty of American researchers who for over forty years have made Nobel Prize- and Lasker Award-winning breakthroughs in biomedical science.

What makes genuine leather genuine? What makes real things real? In an age of virtual reality, veneers, synthetics, plastics, fakes, and knockoffs, it's hard to know.Over the centuries, men and women have devoted enormous energy to making fake things seem real. As early as the fourteenth century, fabric was treated with special oils to make it resemble leather. In the 1870s came Leatherette, a new bookbinding material. The twentieth century gave us Fabrikoid, Naugahyde, Corfam, and Ultrasuede. Each claims to transcend leather's limitations, to do better than nature itself-or at least to convince consumers that it does.Perhaps more than any other natural material, leather stands for the authentic and the genuine. Its animal roots etched in its pores and in the swirls of its grain, leather serves as cultural shorthand for the virtues of the real over the synthetic, the original over the copy, the luxurious over the shoddy and second-rate. From formica, vinylsiding, and particle board to cubic zirconium, knockoff designer bags, and genetically altered foods, inspired fakes of every description fly the polyester pennant of a brave new man-made world. Each represents a journey of scientific, technical, and entrepreneurial innovation. Faux Real explores this borderland of the almost-real, the ersatz, and the fake, illuminating a centuries-old culture war between the authentic and the imitative.

What makes genuine leather genuine? What makes real things real? In an age of virtual reality, veneers, synthetics, plastics, fakes, and knockoffs, it's hard to know.Over the centuries, men and women have devoted enormous energy to making fake things seem real. As early as the fourteenth century, fabric was treated with special oils to make it resemble leather. In the 1870s came Leatherette, a new bookbinding material. The twentieth century gave us Fabrikoid, Naugahyde, Corfam, and Ultrasuede. Each claims to transcend leather's limitations, to do better than nature itself-or at least to convince consumers that it does.Perhaps more than any other natural material, leather stands for the authentic and the genuine. Its animal roots etched in its pores and in the swirls of its grain, leather serves as cultural shorthand for the virtues of the real over the synthetic, the original over the copy, the luxurious over the shoddy and second-rate. From formica, vinylsiding, and particle board to cubic zirconium, knockoff designer bags, and genetically altered foods, inspired fakes of every description fly the polyester pennant of a brave new man-made world. Each represents a journey of scientific, technical, and entrepreneurial innovation. Faux Real explores this borderland of the almost-real, the ersatz, and the fake, illuminating a centuries-old culture war between the authentic and the imitative.

NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING JEREMY IRONS AND DEV PATEL! A moving and enlightening look at the unbelievable true story of how gifted prodigy Ramanujan stunned the scholars of Cambridge University and revolutionized mathematics.In 1913, a young unschooled Indian clerk wrote a letter to G H Hardy, begging the preeminent English mathematician''s opinion on several ideas he had about numbers. Realizing the letter was the work of a genius, Hardy arranged for Srinivasa Ramanujan to come to England. Thus began one of the most improbable and productive collaborations ever chronicled. With a passion for rich and evocative detail, Robert Kanigel takes us from the temples and slums of Madras to the courts and chapels of Cambridge University, where the devout Hindu Ramanujan, "the Prince of Intuition," tested his brilliant theories alongside the sophisticated and eccentric Hardy, "the Apostle of Proof." In time, Ramanujan''s creative intensity took its toll: he died at the age of thirty-two, but left behind a magical and inspired legacy that is still being plumbed for its secrets today.

The story of the making, loss, and recovery of some of the greatest treasures of antiquity, raising questions about ancient mosaic art and its creation, the work of archaeology, and museum practice.In 1932, after years of fundraising and flurries of letters back and forth, an archaeological team from Princeton University gathered in Antioch, Syria. They expected to find sculptures, frescos, palace walls, and busts. Instead, all across this ancient Roman metropolis, they stumbled upon one site after another of extraordinary mosaic treasure, incomparable in number, quality, and historical significance. There were some three hundred of them in all, glories of color and design, stones and pieces of glass heaped up into spectacular images. Many of them were vast, room-sized tableaus, commissioned by wealthy Antiochenes for their villas. They depict banquets, drinking contests, olive harvests; lions, leopards, peacocks, and gazelles; legends, scenes from mythology, Cupid and Psyche, Narcissus and Dionysus. Though dated to early in the Christian era, they are unabashedly pagan; the animals and plants they depict are so life-like scholars can often identify them by species. A vast, collectively obsessive outpouring of industry and effort, art and artisanship, they stand for beauty, the drive to make it, and the human need to have it as part of life. The eight-year dig at Antioch was an astonishing human enterprise, one that survived Depression-era financial downturns, interpersonal conflict, and the looming threat of World War II. Gained were mosaics that ultimately ended up in museums around the world—Harvard University, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, The Baltimore Museum of Art, New York’s Metropolitan, Paris’s Louvre, and more than a dozen others. But while an archaeological triumph, shedding new light on the ancient world, it also raised profound questions about the nature and progress of art. Who has a right to a work of art—the country of origin or the archaeologists who dig it up? Is art more interesting for its beauty, its history, or the craft and intelligence that goes into its making? What elevates a craftsperson into an artist? Robert Kanigel tackles these questions and more, breathing life into this landmark adventure of intellect and discovery.

Der Bericht über das Leben Ramanujans, des vielleicht größten mathematischen Genies des 20. Jahrhunderts, liest sich wie ein spannender, facettenreicher Roman. 1887 als Sohn einer armen Brahmanenfamilie in Südindien geboren, ist es Ramanujan nie gelungen, ein Universitätsexamen abzulegen, und bis zum Jahre 1913 waren seine Perspektiven bescheiden. Dann schrieb er einem der einflußreichsten westlichen Mathematiker, G.H. Hardy nach Cambridge einen Brief, bat um Hilfe - und bekam sie. Hardy erkannte das unvergleichliche Genie Ramanujans und sorgte dafür, daß er nach Cambridge, dem damaligen Mekka der Mathematik, kam. Dort blieb Ramanujan während der Zeit des ersten Weltkriegs und veröffentlichte zahlreiche außerordentlich tiefe mathematische Erkenntnisse. Als er nach Indien zurückkehrte, war er schon krank und starb bald darauf. In diesem spannend erzählten Buch, das sich an ein breites Publikum mit kulturhistorischem Interesse wendet, wird die Zeit der ersten Jahrzehnte unseres Jahrhunderts im subtropischen Südindien und im kalten Cambridge lebendig. Dabei tritt eine Fülle von bemerkenswerten, denkwürdigen, skurrilen, genialen, intellektuellen, sinnlichen, korrekten und exzentrischen Personen auf. Dem Autor gelingt sogar das Kunststück, einen Eindruck von der mathematischen Leistung Ramanujans zu vermitteln, ohne beim Leser mathematische Kenntnisse vorauszusetzen.