Basic Books

Falling upwards; essays in defense of the imagination.

Cultural critic and essayist Siegel has published pieces in such prominent American periodicals as Harper's, The New Republic (where he is a senior editor), Time, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. Here he collects 21 of those essays commenting on such diverse cultural products as the Harry Potter books, the plays of Anton Chekhov, the television shows The Sopranos and Sex and the City, Stanley Kubrick's film Eyes Wide Shut, and a biography of Saul Bellow. Throughout the essays he celebrates those works with imagination, those that display artistic authenticity and integrity, and denigrates those that are the products of an increasingly commercialized culture. His motto as a cultural critic is to "do unto art as what you would have art do unto you." (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Why beauty is truth; a history of symmetry.

Stewart (mathematics, U. of Warwick) has written many popular books as well as technical papers. In this one he traces the notion of symmetry from ancient Greece to current mathematics and physics. The route does not begin with geometry, he explains, but with algebra, and leads through group theory, the quantum world of the very small, the relativistic world of the very large. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)