Man Who Knew Too Much

Alan Turing And The Invention Of The Computer

Author David Leavitt

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A "skillful and literate" (New York Times Book Review) biography of the persecuted genius who helped create the modern computer.

To solve one of the great mathematical problems of his day, Alan Turing proposed an imaginary computer. Then, attempting to break a Nazi code during World War II, he successfully designed and built one, thus ensuring the Allied victory. Turing became a champion of artificial intelligence, but his work was cut short. As an openly gay man at a time when homosexuality was illegal in England, he was convicted and forced to undergo a humiliating "treatment" that may have led to his suicide.

With a novelist's sensitivity, David Leavitt portrays Turing in all his humanity—his eccentricities, his brilliance, his fatal candor—and elegantly…

$21.95

November 14, 2006

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David Leavitt's books include the collection Family Dancing and the novels The Lost Language of Cranes, While England Sleeps, The Body of Jonah Boyd, The Indian Clerk (a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award), and The Two Hotel Francforts. He is also the author of a biography of Alan Turing, The Man Who Knew Too Much. He is a professor of English at the University of Florida in Gainesville and edits the literary magazine Subtropics.