“His name may not ring a bell. Don’t worry, we didn’t know who he was either when we started.“
This really sounds like a weird quote that doesn’t help promote their book at all. Why would I want to read a biography written by people who didn’t know the person until five years ago?
I guess that sentence tells all about who the target audience is for the book.
> Why would I want to read a biography written by people who didn’t know the person until five years ago?
Professional biographers are generalists who turn existing primary and secondary sources into a narrative of someone's life, perhaps with input from the subject, friends and family, etc. They need a fair bit of background knowledge, but they don't need to be experts in the field. It's a biography, not a technical survey or intellectual history, although it probably includes some elements of that.
If you're interested in Shannon's life and want to understand something about his work in that context, this could be a useful to you. If you're primarily interested in his work, read a textbook or his publications.
> Professional biographers are generalists who turn existing primary and secondary sources into a narrative of someone's life
And that's why most "professional" biographies suck. I am not saying the biographer should dedicate their life to their subject , although it certainly does not hurt, but a certain level of competence beyond "just" reading the primary and secondaries sources is expected for a great biography. Sometimes you get that because of long experience, sometimes you get that because you knew the subject or because you have worked in the same field. If you want vapid books like this one or ,a little less charitably, Walter Isaacson's Einstein go for it. But if you want fantastic tour de forces like Westfall's "Never at Rest", Joseph Frank's series on Dostoevsky, Pais' "Subtle is the lord",Stach's books on Kafka you need an experienced world-class expert in the subject in a multi-year (sometimes, multi-decade) effort.
Realistically, how would you know these biographies are actually that good? Suppose we took the most well-researched biography imaginable: a person who pores over a single life over decades and manages to find all or most of the material still available. In this hypothetical case, you are still sold a narrative that is based on the author's own impressions and reading of the material, and the material itself lacks important details about the person that could not be recorded due to their very nature.
We can with some reasonable degree of certainty conclude that some bios are better than others and some bios are not worth reading at all, but in all cases you are left with an illusory understanding of the person.
You are looking for a perfect biography, that does not exist, not even auto-biographies, those tend to be the worst.
But let's compare the Einstein biography written by Pais: He had a PhD in physics, also a degree in mathematics, personally knew Einstein, personally knew most of the greatest physicists of the 20th century. Worked at the IAS in Princeton, published a lot in Quantum Physics,had several contributions to the theory, was a tenured professor, wrote several excellent books in the history of physics. Now imagine a book on Einstein which starts "Dont worry if you dont know who Albert Einstein was, I didnt know either five years ago"
Personally I thoroughly enjoyed both of Walter Isaacson's biographies on Jobs and Benjamin Franklin. I got a lot from both. What specifically makes the other biographies better? More details, wider points of view etc?
All of Ray Monk's biographies are supposedly excellent. I have only read the Wittgenstein one, but he also wrote some books on Bertrand Russell (philosopher/mathematician) and Oppenheimer (scientist.)
It's true that this biography was not a great vehicle for understanding Shannon's technical contributions as they are in many cases glossed over, is much more focused on his professional arc, hobbies, family, kind of more about getting to know him outside of his papers.
But Shannon was a very interesting character, lot's of oddball moments and projects. It's a fun read.
When I join a new software project I usually know nothing about the problem domain either. And sometimes not even about the tools or languages used. But that is not a problem because the skills actually required are the ability to become familiar with unknown problem domains and the ability to use your general knowledge about software development to make use of whatever language, framework, or tool the project asks for.
“But that is not a problem because the skills actually required are the ability to become familiar with unknown problem domains and the ability to use your general knowledge about software development to make use of whatever language, framework, or tool the project asks for.”
I think a lot of projects suffer from the fact that the people working on it don’t have deep domain knowledge. A lot of attempts to “disrupt” an industry fail because they don’t understand the status quo.
I mean I am developing custom business applications, the customer and also the in-house developers have the knowledge. But sure, if you are trying to build a product you want to sell, then you or at least your team or company should certainly have deep domain knowledge. But this seems also really self-evident, how would you even build a product for something you do not understand? And whoever had ever to become familiar with a new domain will probably know this - from the outside and with no or limited knowledge things look often not very complicated, but once you dig into it, even the simplest looking domain has very deep rabbit holes everywhere.
> Why would I want to read a biography written by people who didn’t know the person until five years ago?
Because you're the kind of thoughtful person who would evaluate the question of whether you should read a book based on more than the most superficial criteria. (or because you want to read about Claude Shannon and there aren't a lot of options)
Yes, this article has less to do with Claude Shannon and more to do with garden variety motto's like "Chaos is okay", and "Big picture first, details later". This is a theme I've found in shallow marketing copy that's optimized to raise to the top of a social feed instead of actually inform the reader of something substantial. It's quite sad, as Claude Shannon is a truly fascinating individual, but I will not read three-hundred pages of a book by this post's authors to hear more about him.
Well, I guess our inclinations differ. I wouldn't want to read a biography of Hitchcock written by a blind man, or a biography of Shakespeare by someone who can't speak a word of English, has read none of Shakespeare's works and knows nothing about Elizabethean society -- no matter what experts they speak to.
I'm wondering though: have you read a biography you really loved by someone who completely lacked any personal insight into the work of his subject?
One problem I see is that a lot of biographies are pretty good at describing the person's life as far as social relations go but they usually don’t have only very shallow information about the actual topics that made the person famous. When I read the Steve Jobs biography I would have like to hear more about how he thought about technology and how product decisions were made vs his relationship to his daughter and so on. Same for scientists.
Not sure how to do better but I think there is a risk that professional biographers describe only certain easily accessible facets of the person and not go into the depth of their work.
This really sounds like a weird quote that doesn’t help promote their book at all. Why would I want to read a biography written by people who didn’t know the person until five years ago?
I guess that sentence tells all about who the target audience is for the book.