True Story Book Club: The Man who knew too Much: Alan Turing and the Invention of the Computer by David Leavitt
Our True Story Book Club meets on the first Tuesday of each month at 11 AM in the Community Room of the Library! We read and discuss many different subjects and issues from lots of countries around the world. It just has to be a true story is all! Hard copies of each title are available for checkout on the Book Club Shelf on the first floor of the library.
This month we are reading: The Man Who Knew Too Much: Alan Turing and the Invention of the Computer
(Great Discoveries) by David Leavitt (319 pp)
To solve one of the great mathematical problems of his day, Alan Turing proposed an imaginary programmable calculating machine. But the idea of actually producing a "Turing machine" did not crystallize until he and his brilliant Bletchley Park colleagues built devices to crack the Nazis' Enigma code, thus ensuring the Allies' victory in World War II. In so doing, Turing became a champion of artificial intelligence, formulating the famous (and still unbeaten) Turing Test that challenges our ideas of human consciousness. But Turing's postwar computer-building was cut short when, as an openly gay man in a time when homosexuality was officially illegal in England, he was apprehended by the authorities and sentenced to a "treatment" that amounted to chemical castration, leading to his suicide.
