by Andrew Robinson
Books
1. SCIENCE AND THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE
The Shape of the World: The Mapping and Discovery of the Earth
1989-90: George Philip + Rand McNally—with Simon Berthon
(accompanied a Granada Television series sponsored by IBM, shown worldwide)
--read a related review ("Hell in the Pacific") in Nature
--read a related feature ("How do we know how to measure longitude?") in (BBC) Focus
Earthshock: Hurricanes, Volcanoes, Earthquakes, Tornadoes and Other Forces of Nature
1993: Thames & Hudson, rev. edn 2002
(translated into four languages; it won the US-based Association of Earth Science Editors Outstanding Publication Award for 1994)
(James Lovelock, geochemist and environmentalist)
(Sue Bowler, New Scientist)
(W. J. Albery, Master of University College, Oxford, University College Record)
--read a related feature ("How do we know the cause of volcanic eruptions?") in (BBC) Focus
Einstein: A Hundred Years of Relativity
2005: Palazzo + Abrams; Metro, 2010; rev. edn, Princeton University Press, 2015
(translated into eight languages. Published during the 2005 centenary of Einstein's discovery of special relativity, the book is a biography, with additional contributions, edited by the author, from physicists, writers and others, who include three Nobel laureates--Philip W. Anderson, Joseph Rotblat and Steven Weinberg--plus Diana K. Buchwald, Arthur C. Clarke, Freeman Dyson, Philip Glass and Stephen Hawking)
(Patrick Moore, BBC Sky at Night)
(Physics World)
--read a related review ("Einstein on and off the soapbox") in New Scientist
--read a related review ("Einstein online") in Science
--read a related feature ("Einstein's mysterious genius") at OUPblog
--read an interview with AR about five key books on Einstein's life and science at FiveBooks.com
--read a related feature ("Why is Einstein famous?") at Project Syndicate
--read a related feature ("Einstein in Oxford") at PrincetonUniversityPressblog
--read a (different) related feature ("Einstein in Oxford") in Christ Church Matters
--read a related review about Einstein and politics ("How Einstein brought politics into the equation") in The Daily Telegraph
--read a related review about Einstein and quantum mechanics ("Space, time and spooky action") in Physics World
--read a related feature ("The saga of the Einstein Tower") in BBC History Magazine (History Extra)
--read a related review ("Einstein's magnum opus") in Science
--read a related feature ("We just can't stop misquoting Einstein") in PrimeMind, a second related feature ("Thus spake Albert") in Aeon, and a third related feature ("Einstein said that -- didn't he?") in Nature
--read a related review about Einstein's travels in the Far East and Palestine ("Einstein goes east") in Science
--read a related review about Einstein and black holes ("Black holes and revelations") in Physics World
The Last Man Who Knew Everything: Thomas Young, The Anonymous Polymath Who Proved Newton Wrong, Explained How We See, Cured the Sick, and Deciphered the Rosetta Stone, Among Other Feats of Genius
2006: Pi Press + Oneworld; pbk edn Plume + Oneworld, 2007
--see Wikipedia: The Last Man Who Knew Everything
(Philip W. Anderson, Nobel laureate in physics)
(Tom Lehrer, mathematician and song-writer)
(Patrick Moore, astronomer and writer)
(Ian Finlayson, The Times)
(Michael Sims, The Los Angeles Times)
--read a related feature ("Thomas Young: the man who knew everything") in History Today
--read a related feature ("Thomas Young and the Rosetta Stone") in Endeavour
--read a related feature ("Anonymous polymath") in the British Museum Magazine
--read a related feature ("How do we know the nature of light?") in (BBC) Focus
--read a related review ("Passionate polymath") in The Lancet
--listen to a related feature about polymathy including AR on BBC Radio 4, Monkman and Seagull's Polymathic Adventure
--read a related review ("In pursuit of polymathy") in The Lancet
The Story of Measurement
2007: Thames & Hudson
(translated into nine languages; selected as Book of the Month in Geographical, the magazine of the Royal Geographical Society)
(Eileen Magnello, The Times Literary Supplement)
--read the review
(Andro Linklater, Geomatics World)
--read a related feature ("How do we know the length of one metre?") in (BBC) Focus
--read a related review ("Connecting us all: how satellites remade the world") in New Scientist
Sudden Genius?: The Gradual Path to Creative Breakthroughs
2010: Oxford University Press
(Chris McManus, author of Right Hand, Left Hand)
(Ian Critchley, The Sunday Times)
(Peter Forbes, The Independent)
--read a related feature ("Perspiration, inspiration, and the 10-year rule") in The Lancet
--read a related review ("In search of Ramanujan") in Nature
Genius: A Very Short Introduction
2011: Oxford University Press
(P. D. Smith, The Guardian)
The Scientists: An Epic of Discovery
2012: Thames & Hudson
(translated into nine languages; a highly illustrated collection of biographical essays on some forty scientists contributed by established scientists, historians and science writers, such as Frank Close, Virginia Morell and Martin Rudwick, edited by AR)
--see Wikipedia: The Scientists (book)
--see the list of contributors: "a stellar team" (Nature)
(David Weatherall, The Lancet)
--read the review
Earthquake: Nature and Culture
2012: Reaktion Books
(an illustrated history of earthquakes forming part of a series, Earth, on the culture and science of great natural phenomena; selected for the Scientific American Book Club)
(Seth Stein, author of Disaster Deferred: How New Science Is Changing Our View of Earthquake
Hazards in the Midwest)
--read a related feature ("Shake, rattle and roll") in Minerva
--read a related feature ("How do we know what causes earthquakes?") in (BBC) Focus
--read a related review on Japanese seismicity in E&T (Engineering & Technology)
--read a related review on an Indian earthquake in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society
--read a related review on plate tectonics in Geoscientist
Exceptional Creativity in Science and Technology: Individuals, Institutions, and Innovations
2013: Templeton Press
(a collection of essays based on a conference held at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, edited by AR)
(David Weatherall, Regius Professor of Medicine, University of Oxford)
--read a related review on inventions that didn't change the world in The Lancet
--read a related review on the rise and fall of the Superconducting Supercollider in Physics World
--read a related feature ("Professors, polymaths and creativity") in a collection, Specialism
Earth-Shattering Events: Earthquakes, Nations and Civilization
2016: Thames & Hudson
(Amos Nur, author of Apocalypse: Earthquakes, Archaeology, and the Wrath of God)
(Michael Prodger, The Times)
--read a related feature ("Use a toad to catch a quake") in New Scientist
--read a related feature ("Earthquakes in political, economic, and cultural history") in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Natural Hazard Science
Einstein on the Run: How Britain Saved the World's Greatest Scientist
2019: Yale University Press
(Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal and former President of the Royal Society)
(Ze’ev Rosenkranz, editor of The Travel Diaries of Albert Einstein)
(Judith Curthoys, Archivist of Christ Church College, University of Oxford)
(Daniel Siemens, author of Stormtroopers: A New History of Hitler’s Brownshirts)
(Stephen J. Blundell, author of Magnetism: A Very Short Introduction)
(Robert Schulmann, former head, Einstein Papers Project)
(Barbara Kiser, Nature)
(Ian Randall, Physics World)
--read the review
(Emily Winterburn, BBC Sky at Night)
(Andrew Crumey, Wall Street Journal)
(P. D. Smith, The Times Literary Supplement)
--read an excerpt from the book in Time magazine
--read a feature ("How Britain saved Einstein") in BBC History Magazine
2. ARCHAEOLOGY AND SCRIPTS
The Story of Writing: Alphabets, Hieroglyphs and Pictograms
1995: Thames & Hudson, pbk edn 2000, 2nd edn 2007
(translated into twelve languages, including Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese; a bestseller)
(Henri Cartier-Bresson, photographer)
--read a related letter from Cartier-Bresson to AR
(History Today)
(Philip Morrison, Scientific American)
--read a related review ("Signs of meaning") in Science
--read a related feature ("How do we know the meaning of Egyptian hieroglyphs?") in (BBC) Focus
Lost Languages: The Enigma of the World’s Undeciphered Scripts
2002: McGraw-Hill; rev. edn, Thames & Hudson, 2009
(selected by the Softback Preview as Book of the Month)
(Arthur C. Clarke, writer)
(James McConnachie, The Sunday Times)
(Archaeology)
--read a related feature ("Decoding antiquity: eight scripts that still can't be read") in New Scientist
--read a related review ("Calligraphic conundrum", about the mysterious Voynich manuscript) in Nature
--read a related review ("The codes that got away", about unsolved codes) in Nature
The Man Who Deciphered Linear B: The Story of Michael Ventris
2002: Thames & Hudson, pbk edn 2012
(the basis for a BBC television drama-documentary, A Very English Genius)
(Torsten Meissner, The Times Literary Supplement)
--read the review
(The Economist)
(Current World Archaeology)
--read a related feature ("Cracking the Linear B code") in BBC History Magazine
--read a related feature ("The code breakers") in Minerva
--read a related feature ("Michael Ventris: the man who deciphered Linear B") in Argo, the magazine of the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies
--read a related review ("The master decoders", about an exhibition on Alan Turing and Michael Ventris) in New Scientist
--see also entry by AR on Michael Ventris in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
Writing and Script: A Very Short Introduction
2009: Oxford University Press
(British Museum Magazine)
Cracking the Egyptian Code: The Revolutionary Life of Jean-François Champollion
2012: Thames & Hudson + Oxford University Press USA, 2nd pbk edn 2022
(the first biography in English of the man who deciphered the Egyptian hieroglyphs in 1822)
(Michael D. Coe, author of Breaking the Maya Code)
(John Ray, Professor of Egyptology, University of Cambridge)
--read a related feature ("Jean-François Champollion and ancient Egyptian embalming") in The Lancet
--read a related feature ("How do we know the meaning of Egyptian hieroglyphs?") in (BBC) Focus
--read a related feature ("Revolutionary codebreaker") in the British Museum Magazine
--read a related feature ("Jean-François Champollion in Egypt") in the Ashmolean Magazine
--read a related feature ("Hero of the hieroglyphs") in Minerva
--read a related review ("The race to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs") in Science
The Indus: Lost Civilizations
2015: Reaktion Books
(Michael D. Coe, author of Breaking the Maya Code)
(Brian Fagan, author of The Great Warming and Elixir: A History of Water and Humankind)
(Iravatham Mahadevan, author of The Indus Script: Texts, Concordance and Tables)
--read a related feature ("Unicorns from Utopia") in the British Museum Magazine
--read a related feature ("Deciphering the roots of the Indus civilization") in Current World Archaeology
--read a related feature ("Lost and found") in History Today
--read a related feature ("The mysteries of the Indus civilization") in Minerva
--read a related feature ("Cracking the Indus script") in Nature
--read a related feature about the Indus civilization and war ("Forgotten Utopia") in New Scientist
--read a related feature ("The Indus enigma: a century of decoding") in The Past Magazine
As contributor:
i. The Seventy Great Mysteries of the Ancient World
edited by Brian M. Fagan
2001: Thames & Hudson
--the section, "Ancient and Undeciphered Scripts"
ii. The Oxford Companion to the Book
edited by Michael Suarez and Henry Woudhuysen
2010: Oxford University Press
--the first section, "Writing Systems"
iii. The Great Archaeologists
edited by Brian Fagan
2014: Thames & Hudson
--biographical entries on Jean-François Champollion, Henry Rawlinson and Michael Ventris
edited by Ewan Clayton
2019: The British Library
--the opening essay, "The origins of writing", to a catalogue accompanying a British Library exhibition, Writing: Making Your Mark
3. INDIAN HISTORY AND CULTURE
A. BOOKS ON SATYAJIT RAY
Satyajit Ray: The Inner Eye
1989-90: André Deutsch + University of California Press; 2nd edn, I.B. Tauris + Oxford University Press (India), 2004; 3rd edn, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021
(V. S. Naipaul, Nobel laureate in literature)
(R. K. Narayan, writer)
(Salman Rushdie, London Review of Books)
(Lindsay Anderson, The Spectator)
(Films and Filming)
(Sight and Sound)
(New York Times)
(The Economist)
The Chess Players and Other Screenplays
1989: Faber and Faber, with a preface by Satyajit Ray
(the screenplays of Satyajit Ray's films The Chess Players and Deliverance, and the screenplay of Ray's unmade science-fiction film, The Alien, edited by AR)
--read a related feature ("Satyajit Ray's The Chess Players") in History Today
--read a related book review ("The last king in India") in History Today
Satyajit Ray: A Vision of Cinema
2005: I.B. Tauris, with photographs by Nemai Ghosh
(Henri Cartier-Bresson, photographer and artist)
(Richard Attenborough, actor and film-director)
(Marc Riboud, photographer)
(Philip Kemp, Sight and Sound)
(Christopher Fowler, The Independent on Sunday)
The Apu Trilogy: Satyajit Ray and the Making of an Epic
2011: I.B. Tauris
(Boyd Tonkin, The Independent)
--read a related feature ("Restored Apu Trilogy returns Satyajit Ray's humane work to theaters") in The New York Times
--listen to a feature about the US screenings of the restored Apu Trilogy broadcast on National Public Radio, All Things Considered
Faces and Facets: Satyajit Ray in Colour
2019: DAG (Delhi Art Gallery), with photographs by Nemai Ghosh
--read a related feature ("Ray's Boswell") about Nemai Ghosh, with many photographs, in Frontline
As contributor:
i. full-page entry on Satyajit Ray in the current Encyclopaedia Britannica
ii. filmed interview about Satyajit Ray's The Music Room contributed as an extra on the DVD release of the film in the Criterion Collection (2011), and a printed interview with Ray contributed to the booklet accompanying the Criterion DVD release
iii. programme notes for Satyajit Ray film retrospective at BFI Southbank in London, August-October 2013
Part 1
Part 2
Read a review of the retrospective in The Lancet
iv. interview with Ray and article on Ray as an illustrator
in Sight and Sound, and a longer version of interview
v. interview
broadcast on BBC Radio 4, The Film Programme
vi. selected portraits of Ray by Nemai Ghosh
with a note by AR, 2013
vii. video essay about the making of Satyajit Ray's Apu Trilogy contributed as an extra on the DVD release of the film in the Criterion Collection (2015)
viii. introduction to My Adventures with Satyajit Ray: The Making of Shatranj Ke Khilari (The Chess Players) (2017)
ix. obituary of Soumitra Chatterjee in Sight and Sound (2020)
x. feature on the birth centenary of Satyajit Ray in the Financial Times (2021)
xi. feature on the birth centenary of Satyajit Ray in the British Museum Magazine (2021)
B. BOOKS ON RABINDRANATH TAGORE
The Art of Rabindranath Tagore
1989: Andre Deutsch, with a foreword by Satyajit Ray
(the first book to carry accurate reproductions of Tagore's paintings, based on an exhibition of his paintings and drawings at the Barbican Centre, London and the Oxford Museum of Modern Art, organised by AR in 1986)
--read a related review on Tagore's art in The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society
--read a related feature on Tagore's art at On Being
Glimpses of Bengal: Selected Letters by Rabindranath Tagore
My Reminiscences by Rabindranath Tagore
Nationalism by Rabindranath Tagore
Selected Short Stories by Rabindranath Tagore
1991: Papermac/Macmillan—general editor of series
Rabindranath Tagore: The Myriad-Minded Man
1995: Bloomsbury + St Martin’s Press, pbk edn 1997; new pbk edn I.B. Tauris, 2009, with a foreword by Anita Desai—with Krishna Dutta
(Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Nobel laureate in physics)
(Anita Desai, writer)
(Ilya Prigogine, Nobel laureate in chemistry)
(J. D. F. Jones, The Financial Times)
(Kathleen Raine, The Tablet)
(Adam Kirsch, The New Yorker, in 2011, the 150th anniversary of Tagore's birth)
The Post Office by Rabindranath Tagore
1996: St Martin's Press, with illustrations by Michael McCurdy, and a preface by Anita Desai—translator with Krishna Dutta
Rabindranath Tagore: An Anthology
1997: Picador + St Martin's Press; pbk edn Picador India, 1999—editor and translator with Krishna Dutta
(Robert Nye, Literary Review)
(Jeremy Worman, Time Out)
Selected Letters of Rabindranath Tagore
1997: Cambridge University Press; pbk edn Foundation Books, India, 2005, with a foreword by Amartya Sen—editor and translator with Krishna Dutta
(Patrick French, The Daily Telegraph)
(Sunil Khilnani, The Independent on Sunday)
(K. Natwar Singh, Asian Age)
(Shyamal Kumar Sarkar, Visva-Bharati Quarterly)
--read "The mathematician and the mystic" in Resurgence, a feature by AR with physicist Dipankar Home on the conversations about reality between Albert Einstein and Rabindranath Tagore, based on a journal article, "Einstein and Tagore", in the Journal of Consciousness Studies
C. OTHER BOOKS ON INDIA
The Coasts of India
1987: Thames & Hudson, photographs by Ashwin Mehta, with an introductory essay by AR
Maharaja: The Spectacular Heritage of Princely India
1988: Thames & Hudson, pbk edn 2009, with photographs by Sumio Uchiyama, and text by AR
(Juliet Gardiner, History Today)
Noon in Calcutta: Short Stories from Bengal
1992: Bloomsbury + Viking India, with a preface by Anita Desai; pbk edn Penguin India, 1993—editor and translator with Krishna Dutta
(Tania Glyde, The Times)
India: A Short History
2014: Thames & Hudson; pbk edn 2019
(John Keay, The Times Literary Supplement)
(read the review)
D. ENTRIES IN THE OXFORD DICTIONARY OF NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY
--on Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose, R. K. Narayan and Sukumar Ray
TheCopyright © 2016 Andrew Robinson. All rights reserved.