BOOK CLUB
The TBS Book Club will be meeting on Sunday, June 26, 2022, 10:30 am at the Rabbi's home/parsonage 2 Twixt Hills Rd, St. James 11780
Phone: (631)724-0424 (631)780-6343 Cell: (516)445-6526
This month's selection is"The Mathematician's Shiva" by Stuart Rojstaczer
The Mathematician's Shiva
by Stuart Rojstaczer
A comic, bittersweet tale of family evocative of The Yiddish Policemen's Union and Everything Is IlluminatedAlexander "Sasha" Karnokovitch and his family would like to mourn the passing of his mother, Rachela, with modesty and dignity. But Rachela, a famous Polish émigré mathematician and professor at the University of Wisconsin, is rumored to have solved the million-dollar, Navier-Stokes Millennium Prize problem. Rumor also has it that she spitefully took the solution to her grave. To Sasha's chagrin, a ragtag group of socially challenged mathematicians arrives in Madison and crashes the shiva, vowing to do whatever it takes to find the solution--even if it means prying up the floorboards for Rachela's notes.
Written by a Ph.D. geophysicist, this hilarious and multi-layered debut novel brims with colorful characters and brilliantly captures humanity's drive not just to survive, but to solve the impossible.
Stuart Rojstaczer
Stuart Rojstaczer is an American writer, scientist and musician. Raised in Milwaukee, he received degrees from the University of Wisconsin, University of Illinois and Stanford University. He is a former Duke University geophysics professor, and has lived in Israel, Italy and throughout the United States. His parents were Polish-Jewish, post-WWII immigrants. He has written about education for the New York Times and the Washington Post, and has written research articles in hydrology, ecology, geophysics and geology for Science, Nature and many other scientific journals. His academic memoir, Gone for Good (OUP, 1999), was widely praised. His novel, The Mathematician's Shiva (Penguin, 2014), was an American Booksellers Association bestseller. He received the National Jewish Book Award for Outstanding Debut Fiction (2014) and has been a National Science Foundation Young Investigator. He has lectured at universities worldwide and appeared on CNN, ESPN, NPR and, briefly, in the Academy Award-nominated movie Moneyball. His work has been cited in Supreme Court briefs and congressional laws, and has been used to champion the launch of NASA environmental satellites. He lives with his wife in northern California.