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Alan Lightman

Personal Information

Born November 28, 1948 (77 years old)
Memphis, United States
16 books
4.0 (3)
36 readers

Description

Physicist, science writer, essayist, novelist

Books

Newest First

Song of two worlds

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After a mysterious personal tragedy, the narrator of this story has lost his faith in all things and lives "hung like a dried fly", empty and haunted by his past. He awakes one morning revitalized and begins a Dante-like journey to find something to believe in, exploring science, philosophy, religion, and human life. A novel in verse.

Southern Writers on Writing

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"The South is often misunderstood on the national stage, characterized by its struggles with poverty, education, and racism, yet the region has yielded an abundance of undeniably great literature. In Southern Writers on Writing, Susan Cushman collects twenty-six writers from across the South whose work celebrates southern culture and shapes the landscape of contemporary Southern literature. Contributors hail from Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, and Florida. Contributors like Lee Smith, Michael Farris Smith, W. Ralph Eubanks, and Harrison Scott Key, among others, explore issues like, race, politics, and family and the apex of those issues colliding. It discusses landscapes, voices in the South and how writers write. The anthology is divided into six sections, including "Becoming a Writer"; "Becoming a Southern Writer"; "Place, Politics, People"; "Writing about Race"; "The Craft of Writing"; and "A Little Help from My Friends"--

The Accidental Universe

4.0 (1)
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Meditates on scientific findings that are changing the understanding of the cosmos, exploring such topics as the debate between science and religion, the conflict between the desire for permanence and nature's impermanence, and the ways technology has changed physical experiences.

Reunion

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The facts are public knowledge: five people have been murdered. Each has died from a blow to the head. And the media-dubbed Prince Charming killer has left a "calling card" with each victim. A single thornless rose.But there's another fact...one that the police haven't made public. Something no one, except the killer and the police, should know. But Gabriel Donner does—and he can't figure out why. All he knows is that he's begun hearing voices, sleepwalking and dreaming vividly of the murders...as they happen.He can't go to the police, but there is someone who can help him. Laura Dane, a psychic who's worked on cases like his before, is the only person he can trust with his terrible truths. But as her suspicion about Gabriel's innocence grows, so does the evidence that points to his guilt. Because Gabriel knows more than any innocent man should.

Quantum Legacies

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"Physicists have grappled with quantum theory for over a century. They have learned to wring precise answers from the theory's governing equations, and no experiment to date has found compelling evidence to contradict it. Even so, the conceptual apparatus remains stubbornly, famously bizarre. Physicists have tackled these conceptual uncertainties while navigating still larger ones: the rise of fascism, cataclysmic world wars and a new nuclear age, an unsteady Cold War stand-off and its unexpected end. Quantum Legacies introduces readers to physics' still-unfolding quest by treating iconic moments of discovery and debate among well-known figures like Albert Einstein, Erwin Schro dinger, and Stephen Hawking, and many others whose contributions have indelibly shaped our understanding of nature"--

Three Flames

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1

"Portrays the struggles of a Cambodian farming family against the extreme patriarchal attitudes of their society and the cruel and dictatorial family father, set against a rural community that is slowly being exposed to the modern world and its values. The book spans the period from 1973, just before the Khmer Rouge genocide, to 2015"--