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Measuring the World

A Novel

By Daniel Kehlmann, Carol Brown Janeway (Translator)

(10)

| Hardcover | 9780375424465

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Book Description

The young Austrian writer Daniel Kehlmann conjures a brilliant and gently comic novel from the lives of two geniuses of the Enlightenment.

Toward the end of the eighteenth century, two young Germans set out to measure the world. One of them, the Prussian aristocrat Alexander von Hum-boldt, nContinue

The young Austrian writer Daniel Kehlmann conjures a brilliant and gently comic novel from the lives of two geniuses of the Enlightenment.

Toward the end of the eighteenth century, two young Germans set out to measure the world. One of them, the Prussian aristocrat Alexander von Hum-boldt, negotiates savanna and jungle, travels down the Orinoco, tastes poisons, climbs the highest mountain known to man, counts head lice, and explores every hole in the ground. The other, the barely socialized mathematician and astronomer Carl Friedrich Gauss, does not even need to leave his home in Göttingen to prove that space is curved. He can run prime numbers in his head. He cannot imagine a life without women, yet he jumps out of bed on his wedding night to jot down a mathematical formula. Von Humboldt is known to history as the Second Columbus. Gauss is recognized as the greatest mathematical brain since Newton. Terrifyingly famous and more than eccentric in their old age, the two meet in Berlin in 1828. Gauss has hardly climbed out of his carriage before both men are embroiled in the political turmoil sweeping through Germany after Napoleon’s fall.

Already a huge best seller in Germany, Measuring the World marks the debut of a glorious new talent on the international scene.

Critics

  • "Measuring the World"

    (Reviewed by Kirstin Merrihew OCT 9, 2007) Measuring the World compares and contrasts the lives and accomplishments of adventuresome naturalist Alexander von Humboldt and primarily sedentary mathematician/astronomer Carl Friedrich Gauss. Novelist Dan ... (read full critics)

    mostlyfiction published on Wed, 29 Sep 2010

  • The long and the short of it

    Measuring the World by Daniel Kehlmann, translated by Carol Brown Janeway 272pp, Quercus, £12.99 Prussian aristocrat Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) was an indefatigable naturalist and geographer, the first to describe South and Central America sc ... (read full critics)

    guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

1 Review

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  • This is a novel about Gauss and Humboldt lives. I love the descriptions of how these two men were obsesed with learning and discovering. Humboldt didn't care about traveling in the worst conditions, in order to pursue the knowledge.

    Gauss, on the other hand, only wanted to explore his interior worl ... (continue)

    This is a novel about Gauss and Humboldt lives. I love the descriptions of how these two men were obsesed with learning and discovering. Humboldt didn't care about traveling in the worst conditions, in order to pursue the knowledge.

    Gauss, on the other hand, only wanted to explore his interior world. They are going to meet in a sort of party, and a excitement adventure is going to begin.

    This author has a very nice sense of humor. I love his writing.

    May 21: I finished the reading of this book. It is wonderful. I loved his jokes, and his examples. Since everytning must have an end, this story ends when Gauss' son comes to America. I strongly recomend it.

    Is this helpful?

    ariadna73 said on May 10, 2010 | Add your feedback

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