Literature

Physics for Entertainment

Published in 1913, a best-seller in the 1930s and long out of print, Physics for Entertainment was translated from Russian into many languages and influenced science students around the world. Among them was Grigori Yakovlevich Perelman, the Russian mathematician (unrelated to the author), who solved the Poincaré conjecture, and who was awarded and rejected the Fields Medal. Grigori's father, an electrical engineer, gave him Physics for Entertainment to encourage his son's interest in mathematics. In the foreword, the book’s author describes the contents as “conundrums, brain-teasers, entertaining anecdotes, and unexpected comparisons,” adding, “I have quoted extensively from Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, Mark Twain and other writers, because, besides providing entertainment, the fantastic experiments these writers describe may well serve as instructive illustrations at physics classes.” The book’s topics included how to jump from a moving car, and why, “according to the law of buoyancy, we would never drown in the Dead Sea.”

R. Austin Freeman

R. Austin Freeman was a British writer of detective stories, mostly featuring the medico-legal forensic investigator Dr Thorndyke. He claimed to have invented the inverted detective story (a crime fiction in which the commission of the crime is described at the beginning, usually including the identity of the perpetrator, with the story then describing the detective's attempt to solve the mystery) and used some of his early experiences as a colonial surgeon in his novels. A large proportion of the Dr Thorndyke stories involve genuine, but often quite arcane, points of scientific knowledge, from areas such as tropical medicine, metallurgy and toxicology.

Doc Savage

Doc Savage is a fictional character originally published in American pulp magazines during the 1930s and 1940s. Doc Savage's real name was Clark Savage, Jr.. He was a physician, surgeon, scientist, adventurer, inventor, explorer, researcher, and, as revealed in The Polar Treasure, a musician. A team of scientists assembled by his father deliberately trained his mind and body to near-superhuman abilities almost from birth, giving him great strength and endurance, a photographic memory, a mastery of the martial arts, and vast knowledge of the sciences. Doc is also a master of disguise and an excellent imitator of voices. "He rights wrongs and punishes evildoers." Dent described the hero as a mix of Sherlock Holmes' deductive abilities, Tarzan's outstanding physical abilities, Craig Kennedy's scientific education, and Abraham Lincoln's goodness.

The Wonderful Adventures of Nils

The book is about a young lad, Nils Holgersson, whose chief delight was to eat and sleep, and after that, he liked best to make mischief.

B. Traven

B. Traven was the pen name of a writer who wrote his books originally in the German or English language and whose real name, nationality, date and place of birth and details of biography are unknown or are subject of dispute among literary scholars. What is only certain is that B. Traven lived for the most part of his life in Mexico, where the action of the majority of his novels and short stories is also set. There are many, sometimes fantastic, hypotheses on the true identity of B. Traven. Scholars usually identify him with the theatre actor and anarchist known as Ret Marut, who lived in Germany in the early 20th century and who supposedly left Europe for Mexico around 1924. There are also speculations that Traven's real name was Otto Feige and that he was born in Schwiebus, modern-day Świebodzin in Poland.

It Happened in Boston

First published in 1968, Russell H. Greenan's It Happened in Boston? is the story of a brilliantly talented, unbalanced artist who strives to meet God face-to-face in order to destroy Him. It is a magic spell of a book phantasmagoric, lushly written, full of unforgettable characters and brilliant twists of plot. Along with a vivid depiction of the art world and a breathtaking narrative that incorporates forgery, time travel, and murder.

Nellie Bly

Nellie Bly was the pen name of pioneer female journalist Elizabeth Jane Cochran. She remains notable for two feats: a record-breaking trip around the world in emulation of Jules Verne, and an exposé in which she faked insanity to study a mental institution from within. In addition to her writing, she was also an industrialist and charity worker.

Murasaki Shikibu

Murasaki Shikibu was a Japanese novelist, poet, and a maid of honor of the imperial court during the Heian period. She is best known as the author of The Tale of Genji, written in Japanese between about 1000 and 1008, one of the earliest novels in human history.

Codex Gigas

The Codex Gigas is the largest extant medieval manuscript in the world. It is thought to have been created in the early 13th century in the Benedictine monastery of Podlažice in Bohemia (modern Czech Republic). During the Thirty Years' War in 1648, the entire collection was stolen by the Swedish army as plunder and now it is preserved at the National Library of Sweden in Stockholm. It is also known as the Devil's Bible because of a large illustration of the devil on the inside and the legend surrounding its creation.

The Telephone Booth Indian

The Telephone Booth Indian is a book by A.J. Liebling. Originally published in 1942, this sinewy compendium opens the door to the gritty underworld of grifters, showmen and hustlers from a bygone era of deadpan humor, decadent bonhomie and vigorous one-upmanship. With affectionate aplomb, Liebling introduces us to the colorful if unscrupulous denizens of Broadway’s Jollity Building, whose names alone are reminiscent of Garbage Pail Kids: Paddy the Booster, Acid Test Ike, Lotsandlots, Judge Horumph, Count de Pennies and Marty the Clutch (so named for his "custom of mangling people’s fingers when he shakes hands with them"). The "telephone booth Indians" moniker refers to promoters so pressed for cash that they must conduct their wheeling and dealing from one of the lobby’s eight coin-box phone booths. While it’s riveting to learn about the humble, hardscrabble beginnings of the Shubert brothers, what’s most memorable about this masterpiece is the nostalgia Liebling evokes in his reader for larger-than-life characters such as the sartorial peacock Roy Wilson Howard, a newsman whose self-control on the telephone Liebling irresistibly likens to that "of a fat woman waving away a tray of chocolate eclairs."

Opus

Encyclopædia of the sublime