BULGARIA AUTHOR · DRAMA · FICTION
Carl Djerassi
Also known as: Djerassi, Carl., CARL DJERASSI
OXYGEN DEFIES EASY CLASSIFICATION.
— from Oxygen, 2001
Most acclaimed
In retrospect
1980
Robert S. McNamara, the brilliant secretary of defense for Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, helped lead America into Vietnam. McNamara believed that the fight against communism in Asia was worth the sacrifice of American lives, and yet he eventually came to believe that the war was, in fact, unwinnable. Outnumbered by those who wanted to continue fighting, he left the Johnson administration and his involvement in Vietnam behind. He refused any public comment on the war, and for almost three decades he has kept that silence - until now. Drawing on his personal experience and a wealth of documentation - much of it only recently declassified and some presented here for the first time ever - McNamara has crafted the classic insider account of Vietnam policy making. He reveals exactly how we stumbled into the war, and exactly why it quickly became so difficult to pull out. We meet John F. Kennedy, and McNamara discloses what he believes Kennedy would have done in Vietnam had he lived. We get to know Lyndon B. Johnson, and see exactly how the war tore him apart and damaged his entire presidency. We sit in on secret meetings, we read private cables, and we hear the voices and arguments of the men who battled over America's Vietnam policy. McNamara takes us into the Oval Office for late-night discussions with the president, into the halls of the Pentagon as military strategy is argued, and into the chambers of Congress as policy is debated. He also reveals his own inner torment as the war effort becomes increasingly frustrating, and then utterly disastrous. The result is a book that is not only history of the highest order, but a revealing portrait of the trials of leadership.
Oxygen
2001
"What is discovery? Why is it important to be first? These questions trouble the characters in 'Oxygen'. The action alternates between 1777 and 2001, the Centenary of the Nobel Prize, when the Nobel Foundation decides to inaugurate a 'retro-Nobel' award for discoveries that preceded the establishment of the Prize in 1901. The Foundation thinks this will be easy. In the good old days, wasn't science done for science's sake? Wasn't discovery simple, pure, and unalloyed by controversy, priority, claims, and hype? The Nobel Committee decides to reward the discovery of Oxygen, since that launched the Chemical Revolution. Lavoisier is a natural choice. But what about Scheele? What about Priestley? Didn't they first discover oxygen? The play brings the candidates and their wives to 1777 Stockholm at the invitation of King Gustav III. Through the scientists' wives, in a sauna and elsewhere, we learn of their lives and those of their husbands. Meanwhile in 2001, the Nobel Committee argues about the conflicting claims of the three men. The ethical issues around priority and discovery at the heart of this play are as timely today as they were in 1777. As are the ironies of revolutions: Lavoisier, the chemical revolutionary, is a political conservative, who loses his life in the Jacobin terror. Priestley, the political radical, is a chemical conservative. And Scheele just wants to run his pharmacy. He, the first man on earth to make oxygen, got least credit for it. Will that situation be repaired 230 years after his discovery?"--Inside front flap.
Four Jews on Parnassus
2008
"Theodor W. Adorno was the prototypical German Jewish non-Jew, Walter Benjamin vacillated between German Jew and Jewish German, Gershom Scholem was a committed Zionist, and Arnold Schonberg converted to Protestantism for professional reasons but later returned to Judaism. Carl Djerassi, himself a refugee from Hitler's Austria, dramatizes a dialogue between these four men in which they discuss fraternity, religious identity, and legacy as well as reveal aspects of their lives - notably their relations with their wives - that many have ignored, underemphasized, or misrepresented." "The desire for canonization and the process by which it is obtained are the underlying themes of this dialogue, with emphasis on Paul Klee's Angelus Novus (1920), a canonized work that resonated deeply with Benjamin, Adorno, and Scholem (and for which Djerassi and Gabrielle Seethaler present a revisionist and richly illustrated interpretation). Basing his dialogue on extensive archival research and interviews, Djerassi concludes with a daring speculation on the putative contents of Benjamin's famous briefcase, which disappeared upon his suicide."--BOOK JACKET.