So about all that summer reading I was going to get done…I still have a few weeks, right? Currently at the top of the (literal) heap:
American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin – As a graduate of a big nerdy engineering and science school, I’m embarrassed that I never got to this sooner. It’s a beautifully written, stunning piece of historical research, and I gobbled up the early chapters on Oppenheimers early years as a young academic and researchers, marveling at what it must have been like to be part of this golden age of theoretical physics when all of the greatest mind were racing to define the field in such a compact period of time. Currently reading about the development of Los Alamos and am already dreading what is to come. Determined to polish this one off by the official start of fall.
Music, Acoustics & Architecture by Leo L. Beranek (1962 edition) – I recently had the honor of getting a tour of the gorgeous David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center led by some of the individuals who were deeply involved with every step of this immensely complicated renovation project, including master acoustician Paul Scarborough of Akustiks. Scarborough consulted with Bernanek, who is considered the dean of concert hall acoustics and pioneered much of the scientific analysis and technology that shaped the world’s greatest musical spaces. In 1962, Beranek wrote this seminal text surveying 54 of the world’s great contemporary concert halls in an effort to catalogue their attributes and develop a framework for analyzing their acoustic properties. At the time, Philharmonic Hall (–>Avery Fisher Hall–>David Geffen Hall) was just preparing to open, and you get a sense of just how much the field of concert hall acoustics was just starting to take off as a discipline. Like American Prometheus, I’m looking forward to stepping back in time with this one and soaking up all the historic details from a modern perspective before I pass it along to some of my fellow music nerd colleagues Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants-style.