"The Man from the Future" by Ananyo Bhattacharya

"The Man from the Future" is a biography of John von Neumann. He was behind nuclear bombs and a few other cool things, like modern computing. The book reads less like a biography and more like a history of events that tangent into many places.

Don't get me wrong—the biography is excellent, and the tangents are very entertaining. However, sometimes it felt like the author didn't have enough material and had to "bloat" the book by adding more and more stuff. On the other hand, I can understand the author—there are so many peculiar things, and I'd want to tell them all if I wrote this biography.

I enjoyed the parts about how von Neumann interacted with other scientists and the story behind the migration of scientists to US universities. I also liked reading about how the modern computer architecture was developed and how John touched every piece of evolving computing infrastructure to run the explosion calculations.

Overall, a decent book on the period. I'd put it in the same category as "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!"