When We Cease To Understand The World, by Benjamín Labatut

Semi-fictionalised account of... great scientists and their catastrophes? Kinda hard to explain.

This book got a lot of good press -- I would say I really enjoyed it, but don't think I liked it quite as much as the superfans did. It's super readable and feels pretty fugue-y to me, it has a really absorbing way of telling people's life stories. I am very unclear on how much of it is true? It made me want to read a lot more about the key people in it -- your Fritz Haber's, your Alexander Grothendieck's -- and I wonder if the resulting reading will be weird or disappointing, less delightful than Labatut's somewhat-fictionalised versions.

The book creates a strong sense that genius is deeply entwined with madness. It somehow makes the lives of mad geniuses feel very appealing, aspirational, even while describing some really tragic and deeply alienating events.

p.s. this is the sort of book where I think there's a very high likelihood I completely missed either the main point or an underlying unifying theme/pattern or both.