319pp. '1' in number line. Notes, pp. 281-299; Further Reading, pp. 301-303; Index, pp. 305-319. Blue boards with black spine and brilliant copper lettering. Dustwrapper not price-clipped ($22.95) with Cream title box on center front cover for title and subtitle lettering in black; author name lettering in cream letters over black, below title box; thin black and white photo-portrait (detail) of Turing on left front cover (vertical strip), with vertical strip on right front cover in blue, imaging repeating lines of code; Flawless copy but for minuscule indent to jacket (NO penetration through dw or indent on book itself) atone inch down from top edge near book middle, and three tiny superficial pinpoint indents (looks like a staple endpoints) near bottom center front cover (only one has left a barely discernible indent to front cover). Solid copy, essentially New: very tight spine (as if never opened), sharp corners, no rubbing wear, no previous owner names. Clean text. Solid copy. Unread.

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Bibliographic Details

Title: The Man Who Knew Too Much: Alan Turing and the Invention of the Computer (Great Discoveries)
Publisher: Atlas Books / W. W. Norton, New York London
Publication Date: 2006
Language: English
ISBN 10: 0393052362
ISBN 13: 9780393052367
Binding: Hardcover
Edition: 1st Edition
Condition: As New
Dust Jacket Condition: As New

About this title

Synopsis

The story of the persecuted genius who helped create the modern computer.

To solve one of the great mathematical problems of his day, Alan Turing proposed an imaginary programmable calculating machine. But the idea of actually producing a "Turing machine" did not crystallize until he and his brilliant Bletchley Park colleagues built devices to crack the Nazis' Enigma code, thus ensuring the Allies' victory in World War II. In so doing, Turing became a champion of artificial intelligence, formulating the famous (and still unbeaten) Turing Test that challenges our ideas of human consciousness. But Turing's postwar computer-building was cut short when, as an openly gay man in a time when homosexuality was officially illegal in England, he was apprehended by the authorities and sentenced to a "treatment" that amounted to chemical castration, leading to his suicide.

With a novelist's sensitivity, David Leavitt portrays Turing in all his humanity—his eccentricities, his brilliance, his fatal candor—while elegantly explaining his work and its implications.

About the Author

David Leavitt is the author of several novels, including most recently The Body of Jonah Boyd, and story collections. He teaches creative writing at the University of Florida, Gainesville, where he lives.

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Store Description

Retired academic's reference library with specialization in philosophy, religion, science, and mathematics--all scholarly subject areas; Pre-Socratics to contemporary; biographies; some series collections. General stock also, including fiction, poetry, literary criticism, mysteries, some foreign language, children's, history, sociology, psychology, education. Some signed copies.

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Theoria Books
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