In einem Brief an Martin Buber schrieb FR, am 25. Oktober 1925, daB sich seine eigentliche "literarische Entwicklung" seit 1920 im Ubersetzen abgespielt habe. Wie jede Selbstcharakteristik stimmt diese Feststellung sicher nur zum Teil. Wesentlich jedoch ist die daB es sich bei FRs Ubersetzungen urn eine literarische Tatsache, Entwicklung mit unterscheidbaren Stilperioden handelt. Am Anfang dieser Entwicklung stehen die Ubersetzungen einiger Gebetszyklen, die zunachst im grade gegriindeten eigenen Hausstand gebraucht wurden. Zur zweiten Phase geh6ren die Ubertragungen von Hymnen mittelalteriicher Dichter die, gewissermassen als Sekun dariiteratur, in die jiidische Liturgie aufgenommen wurden. Der Weg fiihrte weiter zu der Auswahl der Gedichte Jehuda Halevis und dann zur Verdeutschung der Schrift. Schon in der liturgischen Phase machte FR es sich nicht leicht. Die Ubersetzungen muBten nicht nur dem hebraischen oder dem aramai schen Wortsinn entsprechen - sie muBten auch mit den dem deutschen Judentum vertrauten Melodien zu singen sein. Eine wissenschaftlich genaue oder "w6rtliche" Ubersetzung konnte so nicht entstehen. Die drei Worte, mit denen die meisten Segensspriiche der hebraischen Liturgie beginnen, zum Beispie- baruch ata adonai - waren w6rtlich etwa mit "Gelobt Du me in Herr" zu iibersetzen. Da standen aber den sieben hebraischen Silben nur fiinf deutsche gegeniiber, was diese unsingbar gemacht hatte. FRs Formulierung - Lob nun ja Lob dir 0 Gott - mag als bezeichnend fiir die Anfange seiner Ubersetzungen genommen werden.

"More years ago than I care to reckon up, I met Richard Feynman." So begins Herman Wouk's trenchant and exhilarating book on navigating the divide between science and religion.
Told by Feynman in that first meeting that he must learn "the language God talks"-calculus-Wouk set in motion the lifelong inquiry that has culminated in this rich, compact volume. Wouk draws on stories from his own life, on key events from the twentieth century, and on encounters not just with Feynman but with other masters of science and religion to address the eternal questions of why we are here, what purpose faith serves, and how scientific facts fit into the picture.

This Is My God is Herman Wouk's famous introduction to Judaism completely updated and revised with a new chapter, Israel at Forty. A miracle of brevity, it guides readers through the world's oldest practicing religion with all the power, clarity and wit of Wouk's celebrated novels.

Uncertainty is a fundamental and unavoidable feature of daily life; in order to deal with uncertaintly intelligently, we need to be able to represent it and reason about it. In this book, Joseph Halpern examines formal ways of representing uncertainty and considers various logics for reasoning about it. While the ideas presented are formalized in terms of definitions and theorems, the emphasis is on the philosophy of representing and reasoning about uncertainty; the material is accessible and relevant to researchers and students in many fields, including computer science, artificial intelligence, economics (particularly game theory), mathematics, philosophy, and statistics.Halpern begins by surveying possible formal systems for representing uncertainty, including probability measures, possibility measures, and plausibility measures. He considers the updating of beliefs based on changing information and the relation to Bayes' theorem; this leads to a discussion of qualitative, quantitative, and plausibilistic Bayesian networks. He considers not only the uncertainty of a single agent but also uncertainty in a multi-agent framework. Halpern then considers the formal logical systems for reasoning about uncertainty. He discusses knowledge and belief; default reasoning and the semantics of default; reasoning about counterfactuals, and combining probability and counterfactuals; belief revision; first-order modal logic; and statistics and beliefs. He includes a series of exercises at the end of each chapter.

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Capital Ideas traces the origins of modern Wall Street, from the pioneering work of early scholars and the development of new theories in risk, valuation, and investment returns, to the actual implementation of these theories in the real world of investment management. Bernstein brings to life a variety of brilliant academics who have contributed to modern investment theory over the years: Louis Bachelier, Harry Markowitz, William Sharpe, Fischer Black, Myron Scholes, Robert Merton, Franco Modigliani, and Merton Miller. Filled with in–depth insights and timeless advice, Capital Ideas reveals how the unique contributions of these talented individuals profoundly changed the practice of investment management as we know it today.

This book emphasizes the creative aspects of algorithm design by examining steps used in the process of algorithms development. The heart of this creative process lies in an analogy between proving mathematical theorems by induction and designing combinatorial algorithms. The book contains hundreds of problems and examples. It is designed to enhance the reader's problem-solving abilities and understanding of the principles behind algorithm design.

Selected as a Financial Times Best Book of 2013
In Strategy: A History, Sir Lawrence Freedman, one of the world's leading authorities on war and international politics, captures the vast history of strategic thinking, in a consistently engaging and insightful account of how strategy came to pervade every aspect of our lives.
The range of Freedman's narrative is extraordinary, moving from the surprisingly advanced strategy practiced in primate groups, to the opposing strategies of Achilles and Odysseus in The Iliad, the strategic advice of Sun Tzu and Machiavelli, the great military innovations of Baron Henri de Jomini and Carl von Clausewitz, the grounding of revolutionary strategy in class struggles by Marx, the insights into corporate strategy found in Peter Drucker and Alfred Sloan, and the contributions of the leading social scientists working on strategy today. The core issue at the heart of strategy, the author notes, is whether it is possible to manipulate and shape our environment rather than simply become the victim of forces beyond one's control. Time and again, Freedman demonstrates that the inherent unpredictability of this environment-subject to chance events, the efforts of opponents, the missteps of friends-provides strategy with its challenge and its drama. Armies or corporations or nations rarely move from one predictable state of affairs to another, but instead feel their way through a series of states, each one not quite what was anticipated, requiring a reappraisal of the original strategy, including its ultimate objective. Thus the picture of strategy that emerges in this book is one that is fluid and flexible, governed by the starting point, not the end point.
A brilliant overview of the most prominent strategic theories in history, from David's use of deception against Goliath, to the modern use of game theory in economics, this masterful volume sums up a lifetime of reflection on strategy.

In his thousand-day presidency, John F. Kennedy led America throuh one of its most difficult and potentially explosive areas. With the Cold War at its height and the threat of communist advances in Europe and the Third World, Kennedy had the unenviable task of maintaining US solidarity without leading the western world into a nuclear catastrophe. In 'Kennedy's Wars', noted historian Lawrence Freedman draws on the best of Cold War scholarship and newly released government documents to illuminate Kennedy's approach to war and his efforts for peace. He recreates insightfully the political and intellectual milieu of the foreign policy establishment during Kennedy's era with vivid profiles of his top advisors - Robert McNamara, Dean Rusk, Robert Kennedy - and influential figures such as Dean Acheson and Walt Rostow. Tracing the evolution of traditional liberalism into the Cold War liberalism of Kennedy's cabinet, Freedman evaluates their responses to the tensions in Berlin, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam. He gives each conflict individual attention, showing how foreign policy decisions came to be defined for each new crisis in the light of those that had gone before. Readers will follow Kennedy as he wrestles with the succession of major conflicts - taking advice, weighing the risks of inadvertently escalating the Cold War into outright military confrontation, exploring diplomatic options, and forming strategic judgements that would eventually prevent a major war during his presidency. 'Kennedy's Wars' offers a dynamic and human portrait of Kennedy under pressure: a political leader shaped by the ideas of his time, conscious of his vulnerability to electoral defeat but also of his nation's vulnerability to nuclear war. Military and Kennedy enthusiasts will find its balanced consideration of the president's foreign policy and provocative 'what if' scenarios invaluable keys to understanding his accomplishments, failures, and enduring legacy.

The United States is locked into three prolonged conflicts without much hope of early resolution. Iran is pursuing a nuclear programme; the aftermath of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein has seen unrelenting intercommunal violence; and the Taliban have got back into Afghanistan. Lawrence Freedman teases out the roots of each engagement over the last thirty years and demonstrates with clarity and scholarship the influence of these conflicts upon each other. The story is complex and often marked by great drama. First, the countries in dispute with America are not themselves natural allies; second, their enmity was not, at first, America's choice. Third, the region's problems cannot all be traced to the Arab-Israeli dispute. Unique in its focus, this book will offer not only new revelations but also remind us of what has been forgotten or has never been put in context.

A portrait of a great American dynasty and its legacy in business, technology, the arts, and philanthropy Meyer Guggenheim, a Swiss immigrant, founded a great American business dynasty. At their peak in the early twentieth century, the Guggenheims were reckoned among America's wealthiest, and the richest Jewish family in the world after the Rothschilds. They belonged to Our Crowd, that tight social circle of New York Jewish plutocrats, but unlike the others -- primarily merchants and financiers -- they made their money by extracting and refining copper, silver, lead, tin, and gold. The secret of their success, the patriarch believed, was their unity, and in the early years Meyer's seven sons, under the leadership of Daniel, worked as one to expand their growing mining and smelting empire. Family solidarity eventually decayed (along with their Jewish faith), but even more damaging was the paucity of male heirs as Meyer and the original set of brothers passed from the scene. In the third generation, Harry Guggenheim, Daniel's son, took over leadership and made the family a force in aviation, publishing, and horse-racing. He desperately sought a successor but tragically failed and was forced to watch as the great Guggenheim business enterprise crumbled. Meanwhile, "Guggenheim" came to mean art more than industry. In the mid-twentieth century, led by Meyer's son Solomon and Solomon's niece Peggy, the Guggenheims became the agents of modernism in the visual arts. Peggy, in America during the war years, midwifed the school of abstract expressionism, which brought art leadership to New York City. Solomon's museum has been innovative in spreading the riches of Western art around the world. After the generation of Harry and Peggy, the family has continued to produce many accomplished members, such as publisher Roger Straus II and archaeologist Iris Love. In The Guggenheims , through meticulous research and absorbing prose, Irwin Unger, the winner of a Pulitzer Prize in history, and his wife, Debi Unger, convey a unique and remarkable story -- epic in its scope -- of one family's amazing rise to prominence.