Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Hardwood Creek Library (Forest Lake) | GRAPHIC 921 HAWKING | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury) | GRAPHIC 921 HAWKING | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
Following their New York Times- bestselling graphic novel Feynman , Jim Ottaviani and Leland Myrick deliver a gripping biography of Stephen Hawking, one of the most important scientists of our time.
From his early days at the St Albans School and Oxford, Stephen Hawking's brilliance and good humor were obvious to everyone he met. A lively and popular young man, it's no surprise that he would later rise to celebrity status.
At twenty-one he was diagnosed with ALS, a degenerative neuromuscular disease. Though the disease weakened his muscles and limited his ability to move and speak, it did nothing to limit his mind. He went on to do groundbreaking work in cosmology and theoretical physics for decades after being told he had only a few years to live. He brought his intimate understanding of the universe to the public in his 1988 bestseller, A Brief History of Time . Soon after, he added pop-culture icon to his accomplishments by playing himself on shows like Star Trek , The Simpsons , and The Big Bang Theory , and becoming an outspoken advocate for disability rights.
In Hawking , writer Jim Ottaviani and artist Leland Myrick have crafted an intricate portrait of the great thinker, the public figure, and the man behind both identities.
Author Notes
Jim Ottaviani is a New York Times -bestselling author who began writing graphic novels about scientists in 1997. His books include The Imitation Game (a biography of Alan Turing), Primates (a biography about Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Biruté Galdikas), and Feynman (a biography about the Nobel prize-winning physicist, bongo-playing artist, and raconteur Richard Feynman).
Leland Myrick is the Ignatz Award- and Harvey Award-nominated author and illustrator of The Sweet Collection , Bright Elegy , Missouri Boy , and illustrator of the New York Times -bestseller Feynman . He has written and illustrated work for Dark Horse Comics, GQ Japan , Vogue Russia , and the Flight series.
Reviews (4)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 10 Up--As a young man, Stephen Hawking was interested in the sciences, but choosing a specialty proved difficult. He grew bored easily, so he dabbled in various areas of study before finding his calling in theoretical physics and cosmology. Hawking also learned as he came into adulthood that he had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a degenerative disease that would leave his mind untouched as it slowly wreaked havoc on his body. Not one to give in to obstacles, he relied on the help of his wives, students, and colleagues to persevere in his studies and make complicated scientific concepts accessible. Hawking narrates this account, covering his entire life but focusing on the 1960s through the 1980s. The conversational, generally linear narrative starts out simply enough but quickly becomes a catalogue of Hawking's many famous contemporaries and the leading theories of the day, which influenced, and were influenced by, Hawking's own work. His personal life is covered as well but is secondary to his achievements. Loose, scratchy linework and bold, high-saturation colors reflect Hawking's bold ways of thinking about the universe. An author's note indicates that though the book is nonfiction, some details were changed to improve the flow of the story. VERDICT Packed with scientific theory, this graphic biography of a scientific luminary will appeal to budding physics and cosmology enthusiasts.--Alea Perez, Elmhurst Public Library, IL
Publisher's Weekly Review
This layered graphic biography of the theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking presents a heroic yet nuanced portrait of the 20th century's second-most famous scientist, after Albert Einstein. A gawky motormouthed teen "hopeless at building things, and speaking Hawkingese," Hawking was a brilliant yet haphazard student at Oxford, with no respect for the "grey men" who spent their time studying. The physics that filled his buzzing mind are explored by Ottaviani (Feynman) as less a field of study than as Hawking's own joyful pursuit, and Myrick's dramatically angled but simplistic artwork often renders his subject with a wry grin. The motor neuron disease that eventually progressed to Hawking requiring a motorized wheelchair plays in the background while the authors unfurl complex spreads laying out how Hawking debated with his contemporaries and used his equations to explore the far corners of existence ("At this level, math is as much art as it is anything else"). Hawking's divorces and emotional distance from his family are poignantly represented, but the story remains about science, which is delivered in an accessible form yet hardly watered down. This smart and wondrously exploratory scientific biography reveals as much about black holes as the man who explored them. (July) This review has been updated for clarity. © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
In which the sometimes-irascible but mostly genial British mathematician finds himself a superhero in a comic-book life."Is God bound by the laws of physics?" So wondered young Stephen Hawking (1942-2018), who soon enough would find himself bound by motor neurone disease. In the end, after years of thinking about it, he responded in the negative to an interviewer's question, "Is there room for God in the universe you describe?" Hawking worried about all kinds of things, easily blending the worlds of mathematics and physics. Toward the end of his life, for instance, the thought occurred to him that any extraterrestrials who visited Earth would conclude that humans were a pest and needed to be exterminated. Before that, as writer Ottaviani and artist Myrick (co-authors: Feynman, 2011) note in this fluent, fun graphic biography, Hawking advanced striking theories in a scientific world whose key players sometimes seemed stuck in Newtonian physicsfor example, by looking at the mathematics of white dwarf stars, the expanding universe, black holes, and so forth. You might jump into a black hole, he posited, but you would not be able to reverse the direction of the arrow of time, so that by jumping in in the past, you would wind up in the future. "I don't think you're going to be able to come up with enough math to prove anything about this," says a doubtful interlocutor, to which Hawking replies, "Perhaps not. But I'd rather be right than rigorous." Readers new to Hawking's ideas, and particularly his enigmatic musings about the nature of time, will find this book, cartoonish as it is, to be full of insight; the science is sharp and to the point. And there are moments of good humor and beauty alike, especially in the vision of Hawking ascending, godlike, toward the event horizon, taking his place in the heavens.Every world-changing scientist deserves such an entertaining but factually rich treatment. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Stephen Hawking was arguably the most recognizable scientist of our time, but not many people are as familiar with his fascinating backstory. As he did in Feynman (2011), Ottaviani spends a lot of time going over the history of physics and the various discoveries made along the way, and while that background is essential to understanding Hawking's work and impact on science, it can occasionally overshadow the complicated and challenging life story some readers might be after. In his full-color, fine-lined artwork that balances appealingly between angularly cartoonish and realistic depiction, Myrick does an admirable job of illustrating the various complicated concepts and theories that Hawking envisioned, as well as of attempting to visualize the many scientific conversations and debates that Hawking had with his colleagues and inside his own mind. While scientific concepts may wash over some people, the touching portrayals of Hawking with his family and his struggles dealing with his degenerative condition will certainly stay. A well-rounded study of physics and one of its brightest stars.--Peter Blenski Copyright 2019 Booklist
