There Are Places in the World Where Rules Are Less Important Than Kindness

There Are Places in the World Where Rules Are Less Important Than Kindness

Summary

One of our most beloved scientists, a fearless free spirit, Carlo Rovelli is also a masterful storyteller. In this collection of writings, the logbook of an intelligence always on the move, he follows his curiosity and invites us on a voyage through science, literature, philosophy and politics.

Written with his usual clarity and wit, these pieces, most of which were first published in Italian newspapers, range widely across time and space: from Newton's alchemy to Einstein's mistakes, from Nabokov's butterflies to Dante's cosmology, from travels in Africa to the consciousness of an octopus, from mind-altering psychedelic substances to the meaning of atheism. Charming, pithy and elegant, this book is the perfect gateway to the universe of one of the most influential physicists of our age.

Reviews

  • Superb. Rovelli's journalism is an expression of the scientific desire to know and understand the world. Beautifully translated by Erica Segre and Simon Carnell, There Are Places in the World Where Rules Are Less Important than Kindness continues a tradition of jargon-free popular scientific writing from Galileo to Darwin that disappeared in the academic specialization of the last century
    Ian Thomson, Evening Standard

About the author

Carlo Rovelli

Carlo Rovelli is an internationally acclaimed writer whose books, including Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, The Order of Time and Helgoland, have been number one bestsellers around the world and translated into over forty languages. As a theoretical physicist, he has made significant contributions to the physics of space and time and he is currently directing the quantum gravity research group of the Centre de physique théorique in Marseille, France.
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