Labatut does not write biographies, he writes fiction. his fiction is like a scaffolding of facts, half-facts, and outright fiction that call into question exactly why such a structure is being shown to us. in his newest book Labatut scaffolds his facts into a monstrosity. the only difference, this time, is that the corpus of grotesque facts was able to be sourced from one individual.

in this book we are introduced to Von Neumann via a shifting meter that is violently oscillating from brilliant American dream genius-hero to purely logical entity beyond any capacity for our understanding. he is beyond what makes us human in many ways. some of those ways are positive but when such magnitude is applied in a direction that does not gel with our mortal morals the results are momentarily horrific.

this book was very readable and fun, but more than anything i thought it represented a really interesting new experiment in Labatut's toolbelt for creating horror. his other texts bring us to the edge of understanding and force us to peer into it through a swirling kaleidoscope lens of fiction, fact, math, and depravity via a paranoid network of facts surrounding the human experiment and contributions from a litany of individuals. this time he is able to increase the tension of that panoply by showing that a simple human man could've resided perfectly at home within that pandemonium.