When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labatut (Author), Adrian Nathan West (Translator)

When We Cease to Understand the World is a thought-provoking read for folks interested in the lives of the pioneers whose scientific genius changed the world. The book was shortlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize and the 2021 National Book Award for Translated Literature. It explores the lives and ideas of Fritz Haber, Alexander Grothendieck, Werner Heisenberg, and Erwin Schrödinger among others. Labatut fills in facts with his own imagination to give the reader a look at the complex stories of several of the key scientists who introduced the theories that made our modern technologies, from weapons of mass destruction to the world wide web, possible. Their discoveries created moral consequences well beyond what they ever could have imagined. Their lives were complex and full of drama. Some of them spiraled downward into insanity. The height of creative thinking can turn on itself and become a path downward into self-destruction. Labatut is a great storyteller. His book made me ponder the assumption of many that all knowledge is worth pursuing. Should some roads be left untraveled? Sometimes we don’t find out until it is too late. Life is complex–this book makes that very clear. There are no easy answers to many of life’s questions. Discerning what questions one decides to ask is an ongoing challenge for each of us personally and all of us collectively. Not a beach read, but worth some summer reading time.