The Sand-Reckoner

Armed with just a few antique facts, Bradshaw ably recreates the extraordinary life of Archimedes, the great mathematician and engineer who built sophisticated weapons during the first Punic War. Archimedes lived in the Greek city of Syracuse from 287 to 212 B.C., except for a brief but glorious youthful stint in Alexandria, the hub of intellectual life in the classical age. Surrounded by men who share his genius for geometry, the absentminded Archimedes becomes intoxicated by numbers, often scribbling diagrams on tablecloths and staring for hours into a box of sand to calculate grains. After three years, he begrudgingly returns to his hometown with his slave, Marcus, to find his father dying and his city at war with the Romans. Putting his engineering skills to use for the army, Archimedes builds bigger and better catapults, and he is soon being courted for his talent by the good King Hieron. Jealous co-workers and an unexpected betrayal shadow Archimedes's rise to fame as the Archimechanic. But Syracuse is winning the war because of his inventions, and King Hieron gives him the royal treatment in an effort to keep him from accepting a job offer from King Ptolemy of Egypt. Archimedes sets his sights on Delia, King Hieron's half-sister, with whom he shares a love of music, but he must choose between her and the fair city of Alexandria, between a career as a simple engineer and the siren call of pure mathematics. Bradshaw (Island of Ghosts) is skilled at bringing historical figures to life, and this intriguing and entertaining novel of the boyish dreamer who possessed one of the ancient world's most brilliant minds demonstrates her vivid imagination. (Apr.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Around the few facts that are known about Archimedes (287?^-212 B.C.), well-regarded historical novelist Bradshaw (The Sarmations, 1998) has fashioned an interesting and informative tale of love, war, and family responsibilities. When the young Archimedes is called back to Syracuse after three years in Alexandria, where he studied his beloved mathematics at Ptolemy's museum, he discovers that his father is gravely ill and the city itself is under attack by the Roman army. Archimedes puts his mathematical knowledge and engineering ability at the service of the state, and builds for King Hieron bigger and more deadly catapults than had ever been seen before, thus helping the king broker a treaty with the Roman commander Claudius. Two subplots are woven into the novel's main thread: the growing love between Archimedes and King Hieron's sister, and the difficult situation that Marcus, Archimedes' Roman slave, finds himself in as he discovers that his brother is one of the Roman soldiers captured by the Syracusan army. While Bradshaw's book lacks the emotional complexity found in the historical novels of Rosemary Sutcliffe, her novel provides a vivid picture of the life and times of the greatest mathematical and engineering mind in the classical world. Nancy Pearl