James Gleick - Chaos (1987)

James Gleick

James Gleick - Chaos amazon.com


Chaos: Making A New Science is the best-selling book by James Gleick that first introduced the principles and early development of chaos theory to the public. It was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize in 1987.

The first popular book about Chaos Theory, it manages to explain the Mandelbrot Set, Julia Sets, Lorenz Attractors etc. without delving into the complex math. It also includes clear interesting descriptions of dozens of extraordinary and eccentric people, the individuals whose separate work converged on a new understanding. It remains in print and is widely regarded as still the best introduction and summary for someone who doesn't know much math.

• James Gleick is an author, reporter, and essayist. His latest book, Isaac Newton, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist this year and a national bestseller, as were Chaos: Making a New Science (Viking Penguin, 1987) and Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman (Pantheon, 1992). His other books include Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything (Pantheon, 1999) and What Just Happened: A Chronicle from the Electronic Frontier (Pantheon, 2002). They have been widely translated abroad.
  
  A native of New York, Gleick graduated from Harvard College in 1976 and helped found Metropolis, an alternative weekly newspaper in Minneapolis. Then he worked for ten years as an editor and reporter for The New York Times. In 1989-90 he was the McGraw Distinguished Lecturer at Princeton University. He collaborated with the Natures Chaosphotographer Eliot Porter on Nature's Chaos (Little, Brown) and with developers at Autodesk on Chaos: The Software.
  
  In 1993 he and Uday Ivatury founded The Pipeline, a pioneering New York City-based Internet service. He served as the Pipeline's chairman and chief executive officer until 1995. He was the editor of Best American Science Writing 2000. He is active on the boards of the Authors Guild and the Key West Literary Seminar.