The Man Who Knew Too Much, David Leavitt
The Man Who Knew Too Much, David Leavitt
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The Man Who Knew Too Much
Alan Turing and the Invention of the Computer

Author: David Leavitt

Narrator: Richard Powers

Unabridged: 9 hr 15 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/01/2014

Synopsis

A "skillful, literate" (New York Times Book Review) biography of the persecuted genius who helped create the modern computerTo solve one of the great mathematical problems of his day, Alan Turing proposed an imaginary computer. Then, attempting to break a Nazi code during World War II, he successfully designed and built one, thus ensuring the Allied victory. Turing became a champion of artificial intelligence, but his work was cut short. As an openly gay man at a time when homosexuality was illegal in England, he was convicted and forced to undergo a humiliating "treatment" that may have led to his suicide.With a novelist's sensitivity, David Leavitt portrays Turing in all his humanity—his eccentricities, his brilliance, his fatal candor—and elegantly explains his work and its implications.

About David Leavitt

David Leavitt’s many books include the story collection Family Dancing, a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the novels The Lost Language of Cranes, While England Sleeps, The Body of Jonah Boyd, and The Indian Clerk, a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and short-listed for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Leavitt is also the author of the nonfiction works The Man Who Knew Too Much: Alan Turing and the Invention of the Computer and Florence, A Delicate Case. His writing has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Harper’s, Vogue, and the Paris Review. He lives in Gainesville, Florida, where he is professor of English at the University of Florida and edits the literary magazine Subtropics.

About Richard Powers

Richard Powers has published thirteen novels. He is a MacArthur Fellow and received the National Book Award. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Overstory, and Bewilderment was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Joshua Nomen-Mutatio on December 12, 2011

Alan is five years old and taking a bite out of an apple for the first time. Human life is rich with such firsts, as we well know and make known with our various rituals and markings, preservations and engravings. First tooth. First step. First word. First day of school. First kiss. But many firsts......more

Goodreads review by Megan on July 02, 2008

Halfway done and totally disappointed in this book. It skips between being an overblown gay biography of Alan Turing (being gay does define one's existence, but does it have to define EVERY MOVE YOU MAKE, too?) and a hopelessly confusing history of how math become computer science. I'm still sloggin......more

Goodreads review by Mark on September 27, 2011

I expected more of a biography. Instead, it's an awkward combination of sketchy biography and layman's explanation of Turing's technical contributions. It's not bad, just not very good.......more

Goodreads review by Nancy on March 03, 2023

Turing was an intriguing, tragic genius. Hard to believe that less than 70 years ago society was still persecuting homosexuals so cruelly. Turing might have had a touch of Asbergers as he seems incapable of deception or even discretion. Truthfully this book would have definitely been better had I re......more

Quotes

“Skillful, literate.” New York Times Book Review

“Ambitious…Stimulating.” Seattle Times

“[Leavitt] conveys abstruse information in elegant narrative prose.” Miami (FL) Herald

“With lyrical prose and great compassion, Leavitt has produced a simple book about a complex man involved in an almost unfathomable task that is accessible to any reader.” Publishers Weekly

“Engaging…Leavitt’s signal accomplishment is a comprehensible explanation of the mathematical abstractions in Turing’s seminal papers…On the biography side, Leavitt reveals a perceptive understanding of Turing’s personality, one more sophisticated than the common view of Turing as a martyr to homophobia.” Booklist

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