Summer Reading: the Baroque Cycle

Young Allison caught up with me after the seminar on Friday to recommend Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s stories. I just laughed and told her that I had read them as they were published, way back in the 20th century. They still are funny.

I recommended Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle, which is great fun, and is the inspiration for my freshman seminar this fall: Systems of the World. Featured characters: Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Jenner, Pasteur, Lavoisier, Einstein, Pinchot, Alfred Wegener, Wiley Post, Watson and Crick, Turing, von Neumann, Adam Smith, and more.