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In these new essays, Williams explores the concept of erosion: of the land, of the self, of belief, of fear. She wrangles with the paradox of desert lands and the truth of erosion: What is weathered, worn, and whittled away through wind, water, and time is as powerful as what remains.

"A novel about a young Chinese woman whose graduate studies in chemistry go off track and lead her to discover the truths about her goals and desires"-- Provided by publisher.
Three years into her graduate studies at a demanding Boston university, our unnamed narrator finds her one-time love for chemistry is more hypothesis than reality. Tormented by her failed research, there's another, nonscientific question looming: the marriage proposal from a fellow scientist, whose path through academia has been relatively free of obstacles, and with whom she can't make a life before finding success on her own. For the first time, she's confronted with a question she won't find the answer to in a textbook: What do I really want?

Carl Djerassi crafts a shrewd collection of comedies of manners, exposing the foibles of elite tribes-business executives, chefs, scientists, professors, musicians, and other clever characters. They spar in battles of one-upmanship using class, education, gender, or prestige as their weapons, sometimes leaving damaged bystanders in their wake but sometimes finding their superiority deflated by unexpected turns of events.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Foreword: Plays on the Page Rather than Stage-- Plays Dealing with Chemistry-- Insufficiency: A Play in 9 Scenes-- Phallacy: A Play in 27 Scenes.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

This book examines the questions "What can science do for the theatre?" and "What can the theatre do for science?" which raise challenges for both theatre professionals and scientists. Unusually, this book deals with plays first and foremost as reading material - as texts to be read alone or in dramatic readings - rather than emphasizing performances on the stage. Concrete examples are given to demonstrate the potential pedagogic value of using the dialogic style and plot structure of plays in science, with a special focus on chemistry. Very few books have dealt with the subject of science-in-theatre and virtually none with chemistry-in-theatre. Texts of the author's two recent plays, "Insufficiency" and "Phallacy", are included in their entirety to offer concrete examples of plays dealing with actual (rather than invented) chemistry. "Insufficiency" represents an example from the field of beer and champagne bubbles, where the topics of academic tenure and fashion in chemistry are analyzed, whereas in "Phallacy", a case history of the similarities and differences between science and art is presented for debate.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor W. Adorno were intellectual giants of the first half of the twentieth century. The drama Foreplay explores their deeply human and psychologically intriguing private lives, focusing on professional and personal jealousies, the mutual dislike of Theodor Adorno and Hannah Arendt, the association between Walter Benjamin and Georges Bataille, and the border between erotica and pornography. Djerassi's extensive biographical research brings to light many fascinating details revealed in the dialogues among the characters, including Adorno's obsession with his dreams, Benjamin's admiration for Franz Kafka, and the intimate correspondence between Gretel Adorno and Walter Benjamin. The introduction of a fictitious character, Fraulein X, intensifies the complex interplay among the four lead protagonists and allows for a comparison of Adorno's philandering and the similar behavior of Martin Heidegger, whose affair with Hannah Arendt is well known. Foreplay brims with intrigue and the friction created when strong personalities clash.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

A funny and moving portrait of the unrequited life of Rosalind Franklin, one of the great female scientists of the twentieth century, and her fervid drive to map the contours of the DNA molecule. A chorus of physicists relives the chase, revealing the unsung achievements of this trail-blazing, fiercely independent woman. A play about ambition, isolation, and the race for greatness.--Publisher's website.

• List of Illustrations Preface
• 1. Four Men
• 2. Four Wives
• 3. One Angel (by Paul Klee)
• 4. Four Jews
• 5. Benjamin's Grip Notes Bibliography Acknowledgments Biographical Sketches Illustration Sources.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

This book features a CD of rarely performed music, including a specially commissioned rap by Erik Weiner of Walter Benjamin's "Thesis on the Philosophy of History." Theodor W. Adorno was the prototypical German Jewish non-Jew, Walter Benjamin vacillated between German Jew and Jewish German, Gershom Scholem was a committed Zionist, and Arnold Schonberg converted to Protestantism for professional reasons but later returned to Judaism. Carl Djerassi, himself a refugee from Hitler's Austria, dramatizes a dialogue between these four men in which they discuss fraternity, religious identity, and legacy as well as reveal aspects of their lives-notably their relations with their wives-that many have ignored, underemphasized, or misrepresented. The desire for canonization and the process by which it is obtained are the underlying themes of this dialogue, with emphasis on Paul Klee's Angelus Novus (1920), a canonized work that resonated deeply with Benjamin, Adorno, and Scholem (and for which Djerassi and Gabrielle Seethaler present a revisionist and richly illustrated interpretation). Basing his dialogue on extensive archival research and interviews, Djerassi concludes with a daring speculation on the putative contents of Benjamin's famous briefcase, which disappeared upon his suicide.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

Carl Djerassi is one of the 'the fathers of the Pill' - he was awarded the National Medal of Science for the first synthesis of a steroid oral contraceptive - and has had a prolific additional career as a writer of fiction, plays, and dialogues about science. In these two plays, "ICSI" and "Taboos", he dramatizes the social transformations and contested viewpoints created by advances in reproductive science and technology.Two of the most startling developments in contemporary science have radically disrupted the historical connection between sex and reproduction: in vitro fertilization and intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) - an assisted reproductive technique that directly injects a single sperm into an egg. The word play "ICSI" - designed for classroom readings - presents, in the format of a contentious talk-show dialogue, the science of direct-injection fertilization and the ethical issues connected with it. A DVD included in the book provides video of the ICSI injection process as viewed through a microscope, to be used in performances of the "ICSI" one-act dialogue."Taboos", a full-length play, turns the screws on characters that reflect a polarized America. Two couples - lesbian partners and a conservative husband and wife struggling with infertility - must make choices in a drama that examines the disjunction of sexual reproduction and the physical act of sex. The North American premiere of "Taboos" will open at New York's Soho Playhouse on September 19, 2008.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Newton's Hooke / by David Pinner
• Calculus (Newton's whores) / by Carl Djerassi.

"What purpose is served by showing that England's greatest natural philosopher is flawed ... like other mortals?" asks one of the characters in Newton's Darkness. "We need unsullied heroes!" But what if the hero is sullied? At stake is an issue that is as germane today as it was 300 years ago: a scientist's ethics must not be divorced from scientific accomplishments. There is probably no other scientist of whom so many biographies and other historical analyses have been published than Isaac Newton - all of them in the standard format of documentary prose because of their didactic purpose to transmit historical information. Newton's Darkness, however, illuminates the darker aspects of Newton's persona through two historically grounded plays dealing with two of the bitterest struggles in the history of science.The name of Isaac Newton appears in virtually every survey of the public's choice for the most important persons of the second millennium. Yet the term "darkness" can be applied to much of Newton's personality. Adjectives that have been used to describe facets of his personality include "remote", "lonely", "secretive", "introverted", "melancholic", "humorless", "puritanical", "cruel", "vindictive" and, perhaps worst of all, "unforgiving". The trait most relevant to the present book is Newton's obsessively competitive nature, which was often out of proportion to the warranted facts, as demonstrated in three of Newton's best-known bitter conflicts: with the physicist Robert Hooke, the astronomer royal John Flamsteed, and a German contemporary of almost equal intellectual prowess, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz - the last fight eventually turning into an England vs Continental Europe competition. It is two of these three relentless drawn-out battles that are illuminated in Newton's Darkness in the form of historically grounded drama.After a summary of the historical evidence, the book starts with the Newton-Hooke struggle (Chapter 2), which was conducted mano a mano, and is then followed by little-known aspects of the Newton-Leibniz confrontation (Chapter 3), which was fought largely through surrogates - notably the infamous, anonymous committee of 11 Fellows of the Royal Society.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Non-Obtainable.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

The focus of the play is on chemical and political revolutions, as well as the Nobel Prize, which was be awarded for the 100th time in 2001.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

This volume explores, through a dialogic format, the ethical and societal issues associated with the advances in the fields of contraceptive and assisted reproductive technologies.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• pt.
• 1. Ed Ricketts and John Steinbeck explore the Pacific coast.--pt.
• 2. Breaking through.