Thursday, August 20, 2009

What is Steven Strogatz reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Steven Strogatz, author of Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order and the newly released The Calculus of Friendship: What a Teacher and a Student Learned about Life while Corresponding about Math.

His entry begins:
At the moment I'm reading Panic In Level 4, the latest page turner by Richard Preston. Ever since The Hot Zone -- the scariest book I've ever read -- I've been a big fan of Preston's. He's one of our best science writers. I love his cinematic style, eye for detail, dry humor and understated language, especially when he discusses something really freaky or macabre.[read on]
Visit Steven Strogatz's website.

Among the early praise for The Calculus of Friendship:
"Steven Strogatz has written an unpretentious, charming, original, and inspiring book. In a disarmingly personal depiction, Strogatz leads us through a story of friendship between understated mentor and virtuosic student. The mathematical excursions are as much a pleasure to read as the moving narrative of the unusual friendship that the mathematics inspires."
--Janna Levin, author of A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines

"The gentle but unremittingly honest account of this friendship utterly absorbed me. Also, some of the calculus is hilarious."
--John Cleese
Writers Read: Steven Strogatz.

--Marshal Zeringue