Volume 42, Number 14 · September 21, 1995
On the Edge of Chaos
By Timothy Ferris
The Quark and the Jaguar: Adventures in the Simple and Complex
by Murray Gell-Mann
W.H. Freeman, 392 pp., $9.95 (paper)
The spectacular success of Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time, a shard of the true cross that has sold more than five million copies since its publication in 1988, touched off a speculative frenzy among book publishers suddenly willing to back just about any scientist-author who might duplicate Hawking's ascent to the best-seller lists. Of these perhaps the most celebrated is Murray Gell-Mann, the Nobel laureate, theoretical physicist, and polymath who thought up and named the quark and has been described as 'the smartest man in the world.'
Review, 3953 words
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