Strange Attractors - by Rebecca Goldstein (Paperback)

About the Book

A collection of seven short stories that explore the labyrinths of consciousness, the fragile mysteries of love, and the forces that--like the mathematical notion of "strange attractors"--bring a secret order to the chaotic randomness of life.

Book Synopsis

A National Jewish Honor Book composed of seven short stories from the author of The Mind-Body Problem.

A mathematician studies the geometry of soap bubbles and responds to the rapture of infatuation by reciting Shakespeare in Yiddish. A group of Olympian intellects is made childlike by the appearance of a double rainbow. Becky Sharp steps out of the pages of Vanity Fair to confound a pretentious philosopher. These are just some of the marvelous and unlikely things that happen in Strange Attractors--a collection of stories that explores the interactions of thought and feeling, mind and heart, to reveal the deep, mysterious ties between seemingly unrelated lives.

"A wonderful collection . . . A picture of remarkable depth and complexity."--Los Angeles Times

"Electric and compelling . . . Rebecca Goldstein brings a keen and specially informed vision to our world."--Newsday

"Rebecca Goldstein again probes the relationships between female intellect and emotion--this time in a sparkling, erudite collection in which brilliant women's minds dictate their romantic attachments while their gender continues to dictate their fate."--Kirkus Reviews

About the Author

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein received her doctorate in philosophy from Princeton University. Her award-winning books include the novels The Mind-Body Problem, Properties of Light, 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction, and nonfiction studies of Kurt Gödel and Baruch Spinoza. Her most recent work, Plato at the Googleplex, was released by Pantheon Books in March of 2014. She has received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, has been designated a Humanist of the Year and a Freethought Heroine, and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She lives in Massachusetts.Rebecca Goldstein is represented by Penguin Random House Speakers Bureau (prhspeakers.com).