My pick for book of the year. The meat of this book is an oral history of John Von Neuman, arguably the greatest mathematician of the twentieth century and the forefather of the computer, game theory, and AI. Labatut is able to bring you into the eye of the scientific hurricane, allowing you to experience all the terrifying gravity and cautious optimism of scientific progress. Labatut’s skill with character is hard to beat; for example, we see Albert Einstein here as a kindly uncle-figure. He does all of these things so well, and in a way that is immensely readable, and add to that a sophisticated take on one of the most hotly contested themes of our time, artificial intelligence. I loved his first book, on the same subject (20th century geniuses), and I will probably reread both while awaiting his next, as neither is too lengthy and both are page burners.