Changing the World, - Horace Mann School

ookshelf
Sun in a Bottle: The Strange History of
Fusion and the Science of Wishful Thinking
Charles Seife ’89
Viking, 2008
“Science has a cure for
wishful thinking… You
have an elegant idea,
you do the experiment,
it seems to work.
Colleagues and
competitors repeat or
refine your experiment,
and now it doesn’t
work. You really want it
to work so you do it
again, differently, and then so do they, and it
still doesn’t work. After enough of this… you
admit it doesn’t work and everybody quits. But
sometimes wishful thinking is incurable: the
poster child is nuclear fusion, the subject of
Charles Seife’s ’89 substantive and lively new
book, Sun in a Bottle,” wrote Ann Finkbeiner,
in a New York Times review.
Explains Seif in his book: “There’s something
about fusion that is a little different that
makes generation after generation of scientists
deceive themselves.” No doubt that is because
decades ago scientists and futurists glowingly
predicted a future in which fusion could potentially
mine cheap, limitless energy from atomic
nuclei. However, thus far, the promise has
not been fulfilled. In Sun in a Bottle, Seif, an
award-winning science journalist and professor
takes a long, hard look at nuclear fusion and
the failure of one scheme after another to turn
it into a sustainable energy source, and how
fusion’s grand promise has led to some dubious
experiments as, according to the Times
review “the state of the art is still what it has
always been: fusion can’t be sustained, and
the energy released is less than the energy
required to produce it in the first place… Seife
writes with effortless clarity, taking readers
through the complex physics and engineering.
That means the reader can not only
understand but, even better, evaluate Seife’s
message: fusion scientists should just cut
bait.” This approachable book should interest
everyone concerned about finding alternative
energy sources.
Go Achilles, A 25 Year Celebration of the
Power of the Human Spirit
By Dick Traum ’58 and Mary Bryant
Achilles Foundation, November 2008
Go Achilles, A 25
Year Celebration
of the Power of
the Human Spirit
by Richard (Dick)
Traum ’53 and
Mary Bryant is a
beautiful work—not only because of the
stunning full-color photographs and moving
short narratives that appear throughout its
attractive coffee-table-book layout, but
because of the inspiring message of each
page. The book is a visual account of the past
quarter-century of opportunities that the
Achilles Foundation has provided for disabled
adults and youth to participate in athletics,
and particularly running, many as formidable
competitors. Founded by Traum in 1983 to
give people with disabilities an opportunity to
participate in mainstream events, the organization
built its membership one athlete at a time,
supporting its members and encouraging them
to compete. Traum himself served as the first
source of inspiration for the group: an above
the knee amputee, in 1976 he became the
first person with a prosthetic leg to run a
marathon. Today, as tens of thousands of
people cheer on marathon runners in New
York, Boston, and around the world, the shout
heard most often is “GO ACHILLES!” in
support of runners like Traum. Now known as
Achilles International the group has members
in more than 70 countries, with programs for
children, for wounded veterans, for athletes
who are amputees, blind, paralyzed, have
cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis, traumatic
brain injuries, heart and lung transplants, and
who compete in tandem biking and triathlons,
marathons, and, for shorter distances, the
Achilles Hope and Possibility tour.
White
By Benjamin Zucker ’58
Overlook Hardcover, 2008
Blue; Green; White: The Boxed Set
Overlook Hardcover, November 26, 2008
In 2001 Benjamin
Zucker ’53 published
Blue, a wildly original
and richly illustrated
first novel about
aesthetics, love,
brotherhood, and
tradition, told through
the story of the fictional
Abraham Tal, a gem
merchant in New York
City. Tal searches for the origins of a treasured
Venetian wedding ring that has a mysterious
link to his family traditions and culture. Zucker,
himself a gem merchant, continued Tal’s tale
with Green, published in 2004, and introduced
new and equally complex characters.
With the publication of White Zucker
completes the Tal family saga, but also opens
up an endless set of literary and artistic
questions. What is extraordinary about each of
these handsome books is their format. Richly
illustrated with works by the likes of Monet
and Vermeer, the actual narrative sits in the
center of the page, with commentaries from
the author and other characters in the saga, as
well as from the writings of Kafka, Proust, and
Bob Dylan running alongside, beneath, and
above the main story—much like a page of
Talmud. After all, what life story does not have
its own back story, shaped by the thoughts,
words, and visual creations of all influences?
Readers can now appreciate the beauty
and complexity of this trilogy with Blue;
Green; White: The Boxed Set, published in
November 2008. $
Horace Mann Magazine Spring 2009
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