The MANIAC
The MANIAC by Benjamin Labatut, published by Penguin on October 3, 2023, spans 368 pages and is presented in English. This book explores the life and legacy of Hungarian polymath John von Neumann, delving into his profound impact on the 20th century and the emerging age of artificial intelligence. Through a narrative that intertwines historical events and philosophical inquiries, Labatut examines von Neumann’s groundbreaking contributions, including game theory and the first programmable computer, while also reflecting on the darker implications of his work.
Readers will encounter a multifaceted portrayal of von Neumann through the perspectives of family, friends, colleagues, and rivals. The narrative unfolds as a literary triptych, beginning with physicist Paul Ehrenfest’s despair over the tyrannical potential of science and concluding with the pivotal match between Go Master Lee Sedol and the AI program AlphaGo. The MANIAC prompts contemplation of the ethical and existential questions surrounding technological advancement and the nature of intelligence, making it a thought-provoking addition to contemporary literature.
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Named One of the 10 Best Books of 2023 by The Washington Post and Publishers Weekly • One of Barack Obama’s Favorite Books of 2023 • A National Bestseller • A New York Times Editor’s Choice pick • Nominated for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction
“Captivating and unclassifiable, at once a historical novel and a philosophical foray . . . Labatut is a writer of thrilling originality. The MANIAC is a work of dark, eerie and singular beauty.” —The Washington Post
“Darkly absorbing . . . A brooding, heady narrative that is addictively interesting.” —Wall Street Journal
From one of contemporary literature’s most exciting new voices, a haunting story centered on the Hungarian polymath John von Neumann, tracing the impact of his singular legacy on the dreams and nightmares of the twentieth century and the nascent age of AI
Benjamín Labatut’s When We Cease to Understand the World electrified a global readership. A Booker Prize and National Book Award finalist, and one of the New York Times’ Ten Best Books of the Year, it explored the life and thought of a clutch of mathematicians and physicists who took science to strange and sometimes dangerous new realms. In The MANIAC, Labatut has created a tour de force on an even grander scale.
A prodigy whose gifts terrified the people around him, John von Neumann transformed every field he touched, inventing game theory and the first programable computer, and pioneering AI, digital life, and cellular automata. Through a chorus of family members, friends, colleagues, and rivals, Labatut shows us the evolution of a mind unmatched and of a body of work that has unmoored the world in its wake.
The MANIAC places von Neumann at the center of a literary triptych that begins with Paul Ehrenfest, an Austrian physicist and friend of Einstein, who fell into despair when he saw science and technology become tyrannical forces; it ends a hundred years later, in the showdown between the South Korean Go Master Lee Sedol and the AI program AlphaGo, an encounter embodying the central question of von Neumann’s most ambitious unfinished project: the creation of a self-reproducing machine, an intelligence able to evolve beyond human understanding or control.
A work of beauty and fabulous momentum, The MANIAC confronts us with the deepest questions we face as a species.
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