A review of Isaac Newton, by James Gleick
191 pages. Vintage Books, $13.95

“Newton was not the first of the age of reason,” wrote economist John Maynard Keynes. “He was the last of the magicians…[H]e looked on the whole universe and all that is in it as a riddle, as a secret which could be read by applying pure thought to certain evidence.”

Isaac Newton—scientist, theologian, heretic—occupies a unique space in human history. Few others have possessed insight sufficient to comprehend nature from first principles, or the flexibility to invent the tools necessary to formalize their insights. Newton was the last to live in pre-Newtonian times: this is the extent of the changes he wrought, that his very name indicates a shift in understanding. Gottfried Leibniz, scientist and one of Newton’s many nemeses, once remarked to the Queen of Prussia that “taking Mathematicks from the beginning of the world to the time of [Newton], what he had done was much the better half.”

Such a towering figure is too easily occluded by his works, and Newton the human being is frequently forgotten. James Gleick, author of Chaos and The Information, reveals in his superb biography Isaac Newton a man flawed by vanity and superstition, a man who hoarded his secrets and who harbored intense animosity for those who presumed to second-guess his genius. Perhaps most notably, Gleick reveals a Newton in isolation, alone in a scientific landscape largely determined by lesser minds. Isaac Newton was, as Gleick puts it, “born into a world of darkness, obscurity, and magic.” Full Review »

A review of The Zookeeper’s Wife
Diane Ackerman
W. W. Norton, 2007
288 pages

On September 1, 1939, Warsaw’s inhabitants awoke to the grumblings of approaching Luftwaffe bomber squadrons. It was to be the first day of school for Polish school children. But this morning, running Polish soldiers took the place of would-be backpack-laden youngsters. Hours earlier, Adolf Hitler had staged a fake attack on the German border town of Gleiwitz to justify invading Poland, dressing SS troops in Polish uniforms who then issued a counterfeit call to arms. His initial plan was simple: drive ethnic Poles east, condense Jews into a reservation plot, and claim a pure Aryan Lebensraum (“living space”). But as the Germans methodically claimed Polish towns over the months, he grew bolder. “Kill without pity or mercy,” he ordered his troops, “all men, women, and children of Polish descent or language… Only in this way can we obtain the Lebensraum we need.” Nordic-looking children, however, would be renamed and raised by Germans.

It is this Warsaw that poet, naturalist, and science writer Diane Ackerman explores in her lusciously written new book The Zookeeper’s Wife. Husband and wife Jan and Antonia Zabinski, two Catholic Poles, ran the Warsaw Zoo, a prized cultural institution home to a bustling community of exotic and local animals. With the help of their young son Rys and many groundskeepers, these animals roamed, well fed and watered—until 1939, that is—through eclectic habitats and artesian wells that surrounded the central villa. Zoology and Nazism may seem an odd literary pairing. But Nazis had an obsession with rare species.

Full Review »