Suspension by Richard Crabbe

The Friends Book Club's newest reading selection is Suspension. This historical thriller centers around the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge. Here's a synopsis from Publishers Weekly.
"The saboteurs, led by former Civil War Capt. Thaddeus Sangree, view the bridge as a symbol of the North's moral corruption and misguided desire for unity. Sangree's own secret motivation is personal: his brother, Franklin, was killed at Gettysburg, and Sangree holds former Union Col. Washington Roebling responsible for his brother's death. Roebling's father designed the Brooklyn Bridge and the younger Roebling is its chief engineer. The scheme has been meticulously planned for years, with saboteurs obtaining jobs working on the bridge so they can understand its weak points. However, when they kill a bridge mason who has caught on to their plan, the murder attracts the attention of bulldog police detective Tom Braddock. Braddock sniffs out the plot through a combination of dogged pursuit, investigative cunning and the brute force that was common practice in 19th-century law enforcement."
(Nov.) Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Join the Friends on Wednesday, March 26th at 7pm in the High Library conference room for a lively discussion!

A sense of the mysterious by Alan Lightman

I was hooked by Alan Lightman's writing after reading Einstein's Dreams. Lightman is both a physicist and a novelist, giving him the tools to write this volume that is subtitled Science and the Human Spirit. Metaphors to explain scientific phenomenon fill these essays and your mind. For example, from cosmology, the use of a slowly inflating balloon covered with dots to represent the expansion of the universe with no known center. Lightman celebrates these unions of science and the humanities. His biographies of Albert Einstein (the contradictory genius), Richard Feynman (the one and only), Edward Teller (megaton man), and Vera Rubin (dark matter) explore each person's imagination, creativity and personality as they wrestle with science and the world. Lightman ends the book with two insightful essays. One essay explores the ramifications of turning 35 and thereby becoming an "old man" in theoretical physics. Most discoveries in that field are made scientists in their twenties! The final essay examines the wired world and the lack of time to waste. Wasted time for Lightman is time that feeds curiosity, creativity, and the inner soul.

Let us know what you think about this book or other books by Lightman.