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　Book De*ion
　　Isaac Newton was born in a stone farmhouse in 1642, fatherlessand unwanted by his mother. When he died in London in 1727 he wasso renowned he was given a state funeral—an unheard-of honor for asubject whose achievements were in the realm of the intellect.During the years he was an irascible presence at Trinity College,Cambridge, Newton imagined properties of nature and gave themnames—mass, gravity, velocity—things our science now takes forgranted. Inspired by Aristotle, spurred on by Galileo’s discoveriesand the philosophy of Descartes, Newton grasped the intangible anddared to take its measure, a leap of the mind unparalleled in hisgeneration.
　　James Gleick, the author of Chaos and Genius, and one of the mostacclaimed science writers of his generation, brings the reader intoNewton’s reclusive life and provides startlingly clear explanationsof the concepts that changed forever our perception of bodies,rest, and motion—ideas so basic to the twenty-first century, it cantruly be said: We are all Newtonians.

Book De*ion 
　　Isaac Newton was born in a stone farmhouse in 1642, fatherless
and unwanted by his mother. When he died in London in 1727 he was
so renowned he was given a state funeral—an unheard-of honor for a
subject whose achievements were in the realm of the intellect.
During the years he was an irascible presence at Trinity College,
Cambridge, Newton imagined properties of nature and gave them
names—mass, gravity, velocity—things our science now takes for
granted. Inspired by Aristotle, spurred on by Galileo’s discoveries
and the philosophy of Descartes, Newton grasped the intangible and
dared to take its measure, a leap of the mind unparalleled in his
generation. 
　　James Gleick, the author of Chaos and Genius, and one of the most
acclaimed science writers of his generation, brings the reader into
Newton’s reclusive life and provides startlingly clear explanations
of the concepts that changed forever our perception of bodies,
rest, and motion—ideas so basic to the twenty-first century, it can
truly be said: We are all Newtonians. 
　　Amazon.com 
　　As a schoolbook figure, Isaac Newton is most often pictured
sitting under an apple tree, about to discover the secrets of
gravity. In this short biography, James Gleick reveals the life of
a man whose contributions to science and math included far more
than the laws of motion for which he is generally famous. Gleick's
always-accessible style is hampered somewhat by the need to
describe Newton's esoteric thinking processes. After all, the man
invented calculus. But readers who stick with the book will
discover the amazing story of a scientist obsessively determined to
find out how things worked. Working alone, thinking alone, and
experimenting alone, Newton often resorted to strange methods, as
when he risked his sight to find out how the eye processed
images: 
　　.... Newton, experimental philosopher, slid a bodkin into his eye
socket between eyeball and bone. He pressed with the tip until he
saw 'severall white darke & coloured circles'.... Almost as
recklessly, he stared with one eye at the sun, reflected in a
looking glass, for as long as he could bear. 
　　From poor beginnings, Newton rose to prominence and wealth, and
Gleick uses contemporary accounts and notebooks to track the
genius's arc, much as Newton tracked the paths of comets. Without a
single padded sentence or useless fact, Gleick portrays a
complicated man whose inspirations required no falling
apples. 
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　--Therese Littleton 
　　Amazon.co.uk 
　　It is a brave writer who tackles a biography of the world famous
pioneer mathematician and physicist Sir Isaac Newton and James
Gleick has acquitted himself superbly well in his new bookIsaac
Newton. Accolades to Newton were piling up even during his early
lifetime in the 17th century when such fame was usually confined to
royalty, popes and archbishops and certainly not to ordinary
mortals born in 1642 of yeomen stock in deepest rural England.
According to Gleick, Newton was the first person whose attainment
"lay in the realm of the mind" to have a state funeral and be
buried in Westminster Abbey. A Latin in*ion proclaimed his
"strength of mind almost divine" with "mathematical principles
peculiarly his own" and declared that "mortals rejoice that there
has existed so great an ornament of the human race"--not bad for a
farm boy from Lincolnshire. 
　　Sensibly, Gleick, a well-known American science writer and author
of the acclaimed Chaos, focuses a great deal on how such a
transformation could happen to anyone with such humble beginnings
at that time in British history. There is no doubt Newton's innate
talent and genius but he was also lucky in that he had excellent
schooling and through the intervention of a relative he was able to
go to the University of Cambridge and went on to stay there most of
his professional life. His mother supplied him with "a chamber pot;
a notebook of 140 blank pages... a quart bottle and ink to fill it,
candles for many long nights, and a lock for his desk". Try sending
your child to university so equipped today. 
　　Of course the critical achievements of Newton's life were in his
scientific achievements and here is the real problem: how to
explain them for the general reader when even academic
mathematicians today find much of the detail of Newton's work hard
to comprehend. This is largely because Newton did not have today's
familiar technical language or standard units of measurement
available to him; he really was exploring terra incognita and
feeling his way. But this is exactly what Gleick manages to get
over so well and there is so much more. Aside from it being an
eminently accessible biography, illustrations, extensive notes,
bibliography and index make this an invaluable source for anyone
who wants to enter the wonderful and arcane world of Sir Isaac
Newton. 
　　--Douglas Palmer 
　　From Publishers Weekly 
　　Gleick's most renowned writing falls into one of two categories:
vivid character studies or broad syntheses of scientific trends.
Here, he fuses the two genres with a biography of the man who was
emblematic of a new scientific paradigm, but this short study falls
a bit short on both counts. The author aims to "ground this book as
wholly as possible in its time; in the texts," and his narrative
relies heavily on direct quotations from Newton's papers,
extensively documented with more than 60 pages of notes. While his
attention to historical detail is impressive, Gleick's narrative
aims somewhere between academic and popular history, and his take
on Newton feels a bit at arms-length, only matching the vibrancy of
his Feynman biography at moments (particularly when describing
Newton's disputes with such competitors as Robert Hooke or
Leibniz). As might be expected, Gleick's de*ions of Newton's
scientific breakthroughs are clear and engaging, and his book is
strongest when discussing the shift to a mathematical view of the
world that Newton championed. In the end, this is a perfectly
serviceable overview of Newton's life and work, and will bring this
chapter in the history of science to a broader audience, but it
lacks the depth one hopes for from a writer of Gleick's
abilities. 
　　From Booklist 
　　Popular sci-tech author Gleick takes as his subject one of the
most written-about figures in the history of science--so what's the
new angle here? A crystalline expositor of what Newton
accomplished, Gleick throttles back the personal aspects of
Newton's life to show the curves of his thought processes. Although
Newton's reputation dimmed in the early twentieth century when his
papers revealed devotion to alchemy and biblical hermeneutics--what
a waste of genius, ran the theme of subsequent biographies--Gleick
incorporates them with the physics and mathematics, as aspects of
Newton's singular obsession with truth . . and secrecy. He
suppressed for decades his invention of calculus; laws of motion;
and optics; and harbored vitriolic hatred for those who disputed
him, such as calculus co-inventor Gottfried Leibniz. Newton's
choleric moods and blazing ideation, Gleick ventures to explain,
can be understood in the context of Restoration England's
intellectual climate, still heavily mystical and only incipiently
rational. Weaving this background into his fine presentation of
Newton's interests, Gleick renders a wonderful impression of the
icon's mind. 
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Gilbert Taylo 
　　From AudioFile 
　　It's hard to conceive of a time when we did not perceive the
world in terms of Newton's laws. This is the picture of a much less
enlightened time, when Newton himself dabbled in alchemy and magic.
Gleick's fascinating biography looks at history and a man born in
the year Galileo died, who did some of his most important thinking
while those around him died of the Plague. Far from our iconic
picture of the carefree boy under the apple tree, Newton was
irascible, vindictive, and egotistical. As interesting as the
picture Gleick paints is, the book is difficult for the layperson.
Incomprehensible math theory is hard to grasp unless one already
has grounding in the subject. Nonetheless, Allan Corduner's
narration is a pleasure to listen to. One can easily imagine his
deeply satisfying voice, rich with accents and tones, coming
directly from the halls of academia. D.G. 
　　About Author 
　　James Gleick is an author, reporter, and essayist. His writing on
science and technology–including Chaos, Genius, Faster, and What
Just Happened–has been translated into thirty languages. He lives
in New York. 
　　Book Dimension : 
　　length: (cm)20.4 　　　 　　　　　 　 width:(cm)13.2

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Isaac Newton(ISBN=9781400032952)

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