Fowler, Allan:Hearing Things (Rookie Read-About Science)
- Taschenbuch 2017, ISBN: 9780516449098
Arrow. Very Good. 5.09 x 0.98 x 7.78 inches. Paperback. 2017. 400 pages.<br>Fear Index Editorial Reviews About the Author ROB ERT HARRIS is the author of Fatherland, Enigma, Archa… Mehr…
Arrow. Very Good. 5.09 x 0.98 x 7.78 inches. Paperback. 2017. 400 pages.<br>Fear Index Editorial Reviews About the Author ROB ERT HARRIS is the author of Fatherland, Enigma, Archangel, Pompei i, Imperium and The Ghost, all of which were international bestse llers. His work has been translated into thirty-seven languages. After graduating with a degree in English from Cambridge Universi ty, he worked as a reporter for the BBC's Panorama and Newsnight programmes, before becoming political editor of the Observer and subsequently a columnist on the Sunday Times and the Daily Telegr aph. He is married to Gill Hornby and they live with their four c hildren in a village near Hungerford. Excerpt. ® Reprinted by pe rmission. All rights reserved. Learn from me, if not by my precep ts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of k nowledge, and how much happier that man is who believes his nativ e town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater tha n his nature will allow. --Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818) Dr. Alexander Hoffmann sat by the fire in his study in Geneva, a hal f-smoked cigar lying cold in the ashtray beside him, an anglepois e lamp pulled low over his shoulder, turning the pages of a first edition of The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin. The Victorian grandfather clock in the hall was s triking midnight but Hoffmann did not hear it. Nor did he notice that the fire was almost out. All his formidable powers of attent ion were directed onto his book. He knew it had been published i n London in 1872 by John Murray & Co. in an edition of seven thou sand copies, printed in two runs. He knew also that the second ru n had introduced a Âmisprint--htat--on page 208. As the volume in his hands contained no such error, he presumed it must have come from the first run, thus greatly increasing its value. He turned it round and inspected the spine. The binding was in the origina l green cloth with gilt lettering, the spine-ends only slightly f rayed. It was what was known in the book trade as a fine copy, wo rth perhaps $15,000. He had found it waiting for him when he retu rned home from his office that evening, as soon as the New York m arkets had closed, a little after ten o'clock. Yet the strange th ing was, even though he collected scientific first editions and h ad browsed the book online and had in fact been meaning to buy it , he had not actually ordered it. His immediate thought had been that it must have come from his wife, but she had denied it. He had refused to believe her at first, following her around the kit chen as she set the table, holding out the book for her inspectio n. You're really telling me you didn't buy it for me? Yes, Alex . Sorry. It wasn't me. What can I say? Perhaps you have a secret admirer. You are totally sure about this? It's not our anniversa ry or anything? I haven't forgotten to give you something? For G od's sake, I didn't buy it, okay? It had come with no message ap art from a Dutch bookseller's slip: Rosengaarden & Nijenhuise, An tiquarian Scientific & Medical Books. Established 1911. Prinsengr acht 227, 1016 HN Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Hoffmann had presse d the pedal on the waste bin and retrieved the bubble wrap and th ick brown paper. The parcel was correctly addressed, with a print ed label: Dr. Alex- ander Hoffmann, Villa Clairmont, 79 Chemin de Ruth, 1223 ColÂogny, Geneva, Switzerland. It had been dispatched by courier from Amsterdam the previous day. After they had eate n their supper--a fish pie and green salad prepared by the housek eeper before she went home--Gabrielle had stayed in the kitchen t o make a few anxious last-minute phone calls about her exhibition the next day, while Hoffmann had retreated to his study clutchin g the mysterious book. An hour later, when she put her head round the door to tell him she was going up to bed, he was still readi ng. She said, Try not to be too late, darling. I'll wait up for you. He did not reply. She paused in the doorway and considered him for a moment. He still looked young for forty-two, and had al ways been more handsome than he realised--a quality she found att ractive in a man as well as rare. It was not that he was modest, she had come to realise. On the contrary: he was supremely indiff erent to anything that did not engage him intellectually, a trait that had earned him a reputation among her friends for being dow nright bloody rude--and she quite liked that as well. His pretern aturally boyish American face was bent over the book, his spectac les pushed up and resting on the top of his thick head of light b rown hair; catching the firelight, the lenses seemed to flash a w arning look back at her. She knew better than to try to interrupt him. She sighed and went upstairs. Hoffmann had known for years that The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals was one o f the first books to be published with photographs, but he had ne ver actually seen them before. Monochrome plates depicted Victori an artists' models and inmates of the Surrey Lunatic Asylum in va rious states of emotion--grief, despair, joy, defiance, terror--f or this was meant to be a study of Homo sapiens as animal, with a n animal's instinctive responses, stripped of the mask of social graces. Born far enough into the age of science to be photographe d, their misaligned eyes and skewed teeth nonetheless gave them t he look of crafty, superstitious peasants from the Middle Ages. T hey reminded Hoffmann of a childish nightmare--of grown-ups from an old-fashioned book of fairy tales who might come and steal you from your bed in the night and carry you off into the woods. An d there was another thing that unsettled him. The bookseller's sl ip had been inserted into the pages devoted to the emotion of fea r, as if the sender specifically intended to draw them to his att ention: The frightened man at first stands like a statue motionl ess or breathless, or crouches down as if instinctively to escape observation. The heart beats quickly and violently, so that it p alpitates or knocks against the ribs . . . Hoffmann had a habit when he was thinking of cocking his head to one side and gazing i nto the middle distance, and he did so now. Was this a coincidenc e? Yes, he reasoned, it must be. On the other hand, the physiolog ical effects of fear were so directly relevant to VIXAL-4, the pr oject he was presently involved in, that it did strike him as pec uliarly pointed. And yet VIXAL-4 was highly secret, known only to his research team, and although he took care to pay them well--$ 250,000 was the starting salary, with much more on offer in bonus es--it was surely unlikely any of them would have spent $15,000 o n an anonymous gift. One person who certainly could afford it, wh o knew all about the project and who would have seen the joke of it--if that was what this was: an expensive joke--was his busines s partner, Hugo Quarry, and Hoffmann, without even thinking about the hour, rang him. Hello, Alex. How's it going? If Quarry saw anything strange in being disturbed just after midnight, his perf ect manners would never have permitted him to show it. Besides, h e was accustomed to the ways of Hoffmann, the mad professor, as h e called him--and called him it to his face as well as behind his back, it being part of his charm always to speak to everyone in the same way, public or private. Hoffmann, still reading the des cription of fear, said distractedly, Oh, hi. Did you just buy me a book? I don't think so, old friend. Why? Was I supposed to? S omeone's just sent me a Darwin first edition and I don't know who . Sounds pretty valuable. It is. I thought, because you know ho w important Darwin is to VIXAL, it might be you.  'Fraid not. Could it be a client? A thank-you gift and they've forgotte n to include a card? Lord knows, Alex, we've made them enough mon ey. Yeah, well. Maybe. Okay. Sorry to bother you. Don't worry. See you in the morning. Big day tomorrow. In fact, it's already t omorrow. You ought to be in bed by now. Sure. On my way. Night. As fear rises to an extreme pitch, the dreadful scream of terror is heard. Great beads of sweat stand on the skin. All the muscle s of the body are relaxed. Utter prostration soon follows, and th e mental powers fail. The intestines are affected. The sphincter muscles cease to act, and no longer retain the contents of the bo dy . . . Hoffmann held the volume to his nose and inhaled. A com pound of leather and library dust and cigar smoke, so sharp he co uld taste it, with a faint hint of something chemical--Âformaldeh yde, perhaps, or coal gas. It put him in mind of a nineteenth-cen tury laboratory or lecture theatre, and for an instant he saw Bun sen burners on wooden benches, flasks of acid and the skeleton of an ape. He reinserted the bookseller's slip to mark the page and carefully closed the book. Then he carried it over to the shelve s and with two fingers gently made room for it between a first ed ition of On the Origin of Species, which he had bought at auction at Sotheby's in New York for $125,000, and a leather-bound copy of The Descent of Man that had once belonged to T. H. Huxley. La ter, he would try to remember the exact sequence of what he did n ext. He consulted the Bloomberg terminal on his desk for the fina l prices in the United States: the Dow Jones, the S&P 500 and the ÂNASDAQ had all ended down. He had an email exchange with Susumu Takahashi, the duty dealer in charge of execution on VIXAL-4 ove rnight, who reported that everything was functioning smoothly, an d reminded him that the Tokyo Stock Exchange would reopen in less than two hours' time following the annual three-day Golden Week holiday. It would certainly open down, to catch up with what had been a week of falling prices in Europe and the United States. An d there was one other thing: VIXAL was proposing to short another three million shares in Procter & Gamble at $62 a share, which w ould bring their overall position up to six million--a big trade: would Hoffmann approve it? Hoffmann emailed OK, threw away his u nfinished cigar, put a fine-meshed metal guard in front of the fi replace and switched off the study lights. In the hall he checked to see that the front door was locked and then set the burglar a larm with its four-digit code: 1729. (The numerals came from an e xchange between the mathematicians G. H. Hardy and S. I. Ramanuja n in 1920, when Hardy went in a taxi cab with that number to visi t his dying colleague in hospital and comÂÂplained it was a rathe r dull number, to which Ramanujan responded: No, Hardy! No, Hardy ! It is a very interesting number. It is the smallest number expr essible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways.) He left j ust one lamp lit downstairs--of that he was sure--then climbed th e curved white marble staircase to the bathroom. He took off his spectacles, undressed, washed, brushed his teeth and put on a pai r of blue silk pyjamas. He set the alarm on his mobile for six th irty, registering as he did so that the time was then twenty past twelve. In the bedroom he was surprised to find Gabrielle still awake, lying on her back on the counterpane in a black silk kimo no. A scented candle flickered on the dressing table; otherwise t he room was in darkness. Her hands were clasped behind her head, her elbows sharply pointed away from her, her legs crossed at the knee. One slim white foot, the toenails painted dark red, was ma king impatient circles in the fragrant air. Oh God, he said. I'd forgotten the date. Don't worry. She untied her belt and parted the silk, then held out her arms to him. I never forget it. ., Arrow, 2017, 3, William Morrow. REV & Newly Illus e. Paperback. Used; Good. Simply Brit – welcome to our online used book store, where affordability meets great quality. Dive into a world of captivating reads without breaking the bank. We take pride in offering a wide selection of used books, from classics to hidden gems, ensuring there’s something for every literary palate. All orders are shipped within 24 hours and our lightning fast-delivery within 48 hours coupled with our prompt customer service ensures a smooth journey from ordering to delivery. Discover the joy of reading with us, your trusted source for affordable books that do not compromise on quality. 04/04/2001, William Morrow, 2.5, Childrens Pr, 1991-01-01. Paperback. Good. 96x4x112., Childrens Pr, 1991-01-01, 2.5<
