Brave Genius

June 24, 2013
Nominally a work about two Nobel laureates—biologist Jacques Monod and writer/philosopher Albert Camus—and their eventual friendship, Carroll’s latest (after the National Book Award–nominated Remarkable Creatures) sprawls across a vast field, spiraling dangerously near incoherence. The friendship between the two men, warm and satisfying as it was, seems merely an excuse for the book. Still, Carroll has a winning way with words, and everything he writes about (especially difficult matters of science) sparkles with clarity. But coverage of WWII-era Europe, as well as the French Resistance (in which both Monod and Camus were active, without yet knowing each other), discussions of genetics and Existentialism, and analyses of the horrific conflict in Algeria in the ’50s and ’60s and the 1968 Paris student uprisings don’t gel into a book—especially not one that is said to be about two men whose lives happened to intertwine. Carroll is convincing about Camus’s influence on Monod’s nontechnical thinking and writing, but the book has no center. The result is a diverting, informative work, but not a satisfying one. Agent: Russell Galen, Scovil Galen Ghosh Literary Agency.

July 15, 2013
A chronicle of the friendship between writer Albert Camus and biologist Jacques Monod, skillfully combining science, biography and history. They first came together in September 1948 to cooperate in a venture against international communism known as Groupes de Liaison Internationale, writes Carroll (Molecular Biology and Genetics/Univ. of Wisconsin; Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for Origins of Species, 2009, etc.). As the anonymous editor and lead writer of the underground resistance newspaper Combat, Camus had provided a voice for his fellow countrymen during the war and immediately after. Monod, a bitter opponent of what he called the Soviet Union's "insane phenomenon," including Trofim Lysenko's genetic theories, attended meetings and contributed science writing to Combat. Their common effort involved a confrontation with friends and allies from past struggles against the Nazis, such as the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. Carroll shows that through this cooperation, Camus and Monod began to understand that shared philosophical and political convictions had fueled their earlier, separate contributions to the Resistance. In those years, while Camus edited, Monod had been involved in clandestine military operations, securing weapons and ammunition, planning sabotage, coordinating with Americans in Switzerland and organizing the civilian uprising that helped liberate Paris. Their postwar cooperation was much broader than simple anticommunism. Nobel Prizes crowned the careers of both. In 1957, Camus became the second-youngest winner of the literature prize at age 44, primarily for his philosophical treatise The Rebel. Monod was awarded his prize in 1965 for discoveries concerning "the genetic control of enzyme and viral synthesis," but Camus, tragically killed in an auto accident in 1960, did not live to see that day. Monod carried on Camus' work through his own later writings and such activities as welcoming Martin Luther King to Paris. An important story well-told.

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Starred review from August 1, 2013
Trumpeted in headlines, the story has often been told of how Camus sacrificed his friendship with Sartre by publicly criticizing the Soviet Union. The untold story (the story Carroll here unfolds) is of how Camus won a brilliant new friendnamely, biologist Jacques Monodthrough the same political courage. Readers here watch as Camus forcefully denounces the Soviet show trials, massive executions, and labor camps at the same time that Monod is reacting to the Stalinist pseudoscience enshrined in Trofim Lysenko's wild biological theorizing. But beyond the shared abhorrence for Soviet enormities that initially brings Camus and Monod together, Carroll limns a number of other parallels in their life trajectories. Both professand then losea youthful faith in communism. Both shoulder major responsibilities in the French Resistance during WWII. Both assume, as the supreme human challenge, the task of affirming creative freedom in an absurd universe. Both win Nobel Prizes for groundbreaking workCamus in literature, Monod in medicine. Readers will learn a good deal about symbolism in Camus' fiction and biochemistry in Monod's molecular biology. But, above all, they will learn about a luminous friendship forged in dark times. A rare chronicle of valiant thinkers fighting political oppression and transcending professional boundaries.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)

April 15, 2013

Nobel Prize winners Albert Camus and Jacques Monod, a trailblazer in molecular biology, were fast friends who first met as members of the French Resistance. Carroll, a National Book Award finalist, draws on fresh, unpublished material to profile their friendship. A wide audience, and the skillful Carroll will make the science discussion accessible.

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2013

Carroll (molecular biology & genetics, Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison; Remarkable Creatures), a National Book Award finalist and winner of a Phi Beta Kappa Science Book Award, deftly weaves science and history together in his account of the lives, accomplishments, and friendship of two exceptional men. Writer-philosopher Albert Camus and genetic scientist Jacques Monod lived in dramatic times, in occupied France, with Camus editing an undergound newspaper and Monod running operations for a Resistance army. They met and became friends after the war. Years later, both responded vocally to the Russians' crushing of the Hungarian uprising of 1956. Wrote Camus, "I have known only one true genius: Jacques Monod." Both received the Nobel Prize: Camus (literatures) in 1957, Monod (physiology) in 1965. Both were public men in the best sense of the phrase and held similar views of the human condition in a wholly secularized world. At Camus's tragic death in 1960, Monod was still aiding refugees, e.g., a biologist and her husband escaping Hungary. When asked why he'd helped, he said, "It's a question of human dignity." Although Carroll is a scientist, science is not overly intrusive in this book; there is an appendix for those who want more such details. VERDICT Spanning history, science, and philosophy, this dual biographical study of two significant 20th-century figures will appeal to a diverse audience. [See Prepub Alert, 3/18/13.]--David Keymer, Modesto, CA

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.