Alec Wilkinson

Det sena 1800-talets upptäckariver drev över tusen polarforskare till det ogästvänliga landskapet. En av dem var den visionäre svenske upptäcktsresanden S.A. Andrée som år 1897 gjorde ett uppmärksammat försök att tillsammans med två kollegor flyga till nordpolen i vätgasballongen Örnen.

Sedan blev det tyst.

Spekulationerna om vad som hänt forskarna var många. 33 år senare påträffades deras kroppar och dagböcker på isen. När kvarlevorna fördes till Sverige möttes de av ett sällan skådat folkuppbåd och en landssorgsliknande stämning.

Alec Wilkinson, medarbetare i New Yorker, skildrar en fascinerande epok med äventyrare och upptäcktsresanden som under outsägliga umbäranden utforskade denna nya kontinent och vars slutpunkt var Andrée-expeditionen. Med deltagarnas egna anteckningar, fotografier och samtida källor berättar han historien den ödesdigra polarfärden.

Poppa Neutrino is a philosopher of movement, a vernacular Buddhist, a San Francisco bohemian, a polymath, a pauper, a football strategist for the Red Mesa Redskins of the Navajo Nation, and a mariner who built a raft from materials he found on the streets of New York and sailed across the North Atlantic. And he is possibly the happiest man in the world. This is a rare and compelling book in which nearly every page contains an implausible, outrageous and exhilarating adventure.

The story of the only person to attempt to reach the North Pole by balloon, and the golden age of Polar Exploration.In August 1930 a Norwegian sloop sailing in the Arctic Ocean moored at a remote island. Here, the crew members found a body leaning against a rock. When they saw a large monogram ?A? on the body?s jacket, they realized who the unfortunate adventurer had been: S. A. Andrée, the Swede who, in 1897, set off to discover the North Pole, one of the last unmapped places on earth.The Ice Balloon is the story of the heroic era of polar exploration, and the dream of conquering one of the most inhumane landscapes on earth. In this golden age of discovery, Andrée?s ambition was the most original and remarkable. For, of the thousand or so people who had gone looking for the Pole, most of whom perished on the way, only Andrée used a balloon.

A spirited and intimate look at American icon and activist Pete Seeger. Throughout his life, Pete Seeger transformed a classic American musical style into a form of peaceful protest against war, segregation, and nuclear weapons. Drawing on his extensive talks with Seeger, Alec Wilkinson delivers a first hand look at Seeger's unique blend of independence and commitment, charm, courage, energy, and belief in human equality and American democracy. We see Seeger as a  child, instilled with a love of music by his parents; as a teenager, hearing real folk music for the first time; as a young adult, singing with Woody Guthrie. And finally, Seeger the man marching with the Rev. Martin Luther King in Selma, standing up to McCarthyism, and fighting for his beloved Hudson River. The gigantic life captured in this slender volume is truly an American anthem.

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice"Wilkinson has accomplished something more moving and original, braiding his stumbling attempts to get better at math with his deepening awareness that there's an entire universe of understanding that will, in some fundamental sense, forever lie outside his reach." -Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times "There is almost no writer I admire as much as I do Alec Wilkinson. His work has enduring brilliance and humanity." -Susan Orlean, author of The Library Book A spirited, metaphysical exploration into math's deepest mysteries and conundrums at the crux of middle age.Decades after struggling to understand math as a boy, Alec Wilkinson decides to embark on a journey to learn it as a middle-aged man. What begins as a personal challenge-and it's challenging-soon transforms into something greater than a belabored effort to learn math. Despite his incompetence, Wilkinson encounters a universe of unexpected mysteries in his pursuit of mathematical knowledge and quickly becomes fascinated; soon, his exercise in personal growth (and torture) morphs into an intellectually expansive exploration.In A Divine Language, Wilkinson, a contributor to The New Yorker for over forty years, journeys into the heart of the divine aspect of mathematics-its mysteries, challenges, and revelations-since antiquity. As he submits himself to the lure of deep mathematics, he takes the reader through his investigations into the subject's big questions-number theory and the creation of numbers, the debate over math's human or otherworldly origins, problems and equations that remain unsolved after centuries, the conundrum of prime numbers. Writing with warm humor and sharp observation as he traverses practical math's endless frustrations and rewards, Wilkinson provides an awe-inspiring account of an adventure from a land of strange sights. Part memoir, part metaphysical travel book, and part journey in self-improvement, A Divine Language is one man's second attempt at understanding the numbers in front of him, and the world beyond.