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	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
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Memoirs
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A MIND AT PLAY

Rob Goodman Jimmy Soni

How Claude Shannon Invented the Informaton Age

A MIND AT PLAY is an incredible biography of one of the foremost intellects of the twentieth century: Claude Shannon—the neglected architect of the Information Age, whose insights stand behind every computer built, email sent, video streamed, and webpage loaded.

Claude Shannon was a groundbreaking polymath, a brilliant tinkerer, and a digital pioneer. He constructed a fleet of customized unicycles and a flamethrowing trumpet, outfoxed Vegas casinos, and built juggling robots. He also wrote the seminal text of the digital revolution, which has been called “the Magna Carta of the Information Age.” His discoveries would lead contemporaries to compare him to Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton. His work anticipated by decades the world we’d be living in today—and gave mathematicians and engineers the tools to bring that world to pass.

In this elegantly written, exhaustively researched biography, Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman reveal Claude Shannon’s full story for the first time. It’s the story of a small-town Michigan boy whose career stretched from the era of room-sized computers powered by gears and string to the age of Apple. It’s the story of the origins of our digital world in the tunnels of MIT and the “idea factory” of Bell Labs, in the “scientists’ war” with Nazi Germany, and in the work of Shannon’s collaborators and rivals, thinkers like Alan Turing, John von Neumann, Vannevar Bush, and Norbert Wiener.

And it’s the story of Shannon’s life as an often reclusive, always playful genius. With access to Shannon’s family and friends, A Mind at Play brings this singular innovator and creative genius to life.

Jimmy Soni is an author and editor. He has worked as an editor at The New York Observer and The Washington Examiner. He has worked as a speechwriter, and his writing and commentary have appeared in Slate, The Atlantic, and CNN. He is a graduate of Duke University and was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30. With Rob Goodman, he is the coauthor of Rome’s Last Citizen: The Life and Legacy of Cato, Mortal Enemy of Caesar and A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age.

Rob Goodman is a doctoral candidate at Columbia University and a former congressional speechwriter. He has written for Slate, The Atlantic, Politico Magazine, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. His scholarly work has appeared in History of Political Thought, the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, and The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy. With Jimmy Soni, he is the coauthor of Rome’s Last Citizen: The Life and Legacy of Cato, Mortal Enemy of Caesar and A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age.

Available products
Book Published 2017-07-18 by Simon & Schuster
Book Published 2017-07-18 by Simon & Schuster

Comments

A welcome and inspiring account of a largely unsung hero—unsung because, the authors suggest, he accomplished something so fundamental that it's difficult to imagine a world without it.

Claude Shannon wrote the 'the Magna Carta of the Information Age' and conceived of the basic concept underlying all digital computers. Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman offer a long overdue, insightful, and humane portrait of this eccentric and towering genius.

This is a long overdue biography of a man who shaped the Information Age we live in, and a thinker who combined the playfulness of Richard Feynman with the genius of Albert Einstein. For anyone interested in living both a playful and a thoughtful life, there is no better model than Claude Shannon—and no better writing team than Soni and Goodman to have written the book on it.

At last, a brilliant treatment of the life of Claude Shannon, one of the 20th century's most remarkable scientists in the field of information technology. This giant of a man launched the digital world we now inhabit, but his is not the household name it deserves to be. Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman have corrected this with their superb new book presenting Shannon's amazing personal and professional life.

A Mind at Play bubbles over with energy and verve and insight. This is biography as it should be, but seldom is.

Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman have written a fascinating, readable, and necessary biography of a true American genius. This is the book that finally explains Claude Shannon’s character and career as well as the context of his extraordinary life and times.

At long last, the biography of one of the towering geniuses of the 20th century we have been awaiting for decades. In this veritable labor of love by Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman, one has on offer a thoroughly enthralling and beautifully rendered portrait of Claude Shannon, the mathematician, the engineer, the inventor, the tinkerer, and, above all, the enigmatic man who became the intellectual father of the vital lifeblood of our age: information.

In this fine biography of Claude Shannon, Soni and Goodman make accessible the origins of digital communications while revealing how engineers think deeply not only about things but through things; it was through tinkering that Shannon was able to bring us the modern digital world.

An exceptionally elegant and authoritative portrait of a man of few words but many big ideas. Soni and Goodman's elucidations of Claude Shannon’s theories are gems of conciseness and clarity, and their case for placing him in the same pantheon as Turing and von Neumann is compelling.

An elegantly avid biography, full of freewheeling curiosity and fun. It's a pleasure getting to know you, Claude Shannon!

We are familiar with the bright young stars who brought us the web, Google and Facebook, but this engaging book demystifies the digital communications revolution and shows how it really began! In telling the story of Claude Shannon and his peers, Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman have given the lay reader a fascinating introduction to the ideas and the people who made our digital age possible.

A Mind at Play bubbles over with energy and verve and insight. This is biography as it should be, but seldom is.