Stargazing in the Atomic Age

<p>During World War II, with apocalypse imminent, a group of well-known Jewish artists and scientists sidestepped despair by challenging themselves to solve some of the most difficult questions posed by our age. Many of these people had just fled Europe. Others were born in the United States to immigrants who had escaped Russia's pogroms. Alternately celebrated as mavericks and dismissed as eccentrics, they trespassed the boundaries of their own disciplines as the entrance to nations slammed shut behind them. <br><br>In <i>Stargazing in the Atomic Age</i>, Anne Goldman deftly interweaves personal and intellectual history in lucent essays that throw new light on these figures and their virtuosic thinking. In sentences that mingle learning with self-revelation, juxtaposition becomes an instrument for making the familiar strange, leading us to question our assumptions about who these iconic characters were and where their contributions can lead us. In...