The Kindle edition of Tetraktys is out!

(Many thanks to Emerald Bay Books and to Lee Nagan, my publisher’s excellent, punctilious printer / typesetter.)

People have undergone many forms of visual torture over the years to read on the go.  iPhone eReaders are one of the latest, but by historical standards, not as brutal on the eyes as you might think.

Here’s a 1620 edition of the works of Silius Italicus, a Roman poet. (A piquant aside: It may have belonged to a the Bishop of Metz, a bastard son of kind Henry IV, as I mention here.)  This is dense reading. An entire epic poem in less volume than a deck of cards. I’m content just to admire the binding.

Silius Italicus, On the Second Punic War, 1620 Dutch edition

A nice review of Tetraktys by Gregory Conti (faculty at West Point) just came out in ACM netWorker magazine:

Few people besides Juels could have written such a book, especially with such authenticity. Playing to his strengths as scientist, cryptography expert, and classically trained thinker, he delivers a tale that is compelling, intellectually stimulating, and destined to resonate with the technical community.

I’m this week’s featured fiction writer at The Nervous Breakdown. There’s an excerpt from Tetraktys and a self-interview in which I talk about such things as the seductions of cryptography…

The handwriting looked, in fact, like a kindred version of Ambrose’s own. He felt a thrill of camaraderie, like that of a traveler who, after long wandering in a foreign land, overhears at a bazaar stall, for the first time in months, a countryman speaking his native English.

Tetraktys, p. 198

During my commute to work by train, I keep my head well buried in a book or technical article. While I imagine I have a forbidding look of concentration, and reticence is the rule on Boston trains, someone did once buttonhole me. I was penning notes in an article, when a woman leaned over and asked, “Is that a fountain pen?”

Continue reading "The Freemasonry of Fountain Pens"…

Among the collection of small collections that I’ve accumulated willy-nilly over the years is a group of ancient Roman brooches.

Continue reading "The Bronze Serpent (a Brainteaser)"…

A so-called “bilingual” Attic vase speaks two visual languages. One side is painted in the older “black-figure” style, the other side with the newer—and for us, more familiar—”red-figure” style.

Tetraktys mentions such a vase in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. It depicts the Homeric heroes Achilles and Ajax taking a break from slaughtering Trojans to play a board game.

Bilingual vase--black-figure side (Lysippides)

Bilingual vase--red-figure side (Andokides)

Continue reading "The Vase That Speaks"…

"Pythagoras," the Musical Instrument

Between the tracks was a row of metal tubes, like a suspended battery of organ pipes, with hammers in between. The whole apparatus swayed, the hammers knocking gently against the tubes, producing an eerily tempered music…

Tetraktys,  p. 186

Continue reading "The Pythagorean Musical Underground"…

Distinguishing authentic artifacts from forged or misattributed ones is an essential challenge for archaeologists and art historians. Scientific tests, though, often prove incomplete or inconclusive (or simply misleading). In such cases, the best line of defense against forged artifacts is an expert with a finely honed intuitive sense for authenticity—sometimes called a fakebuster. (In Tetraktys, Dr. Jerusalem is a consummate fakebuster.)

Can you use your fakebusting skills to figure out which image is real and which is fake?

Attic vase depicting Athena and Herakles, circa 520 B.C., Andokides painter

Click here for the answer!

When I hear the word “brainstorm,” my free-association is “tempest in a teapot.” To me, “brainstorming” is corporatespeak for a widely familiar, disheartening situation. A group of people gathers in a conference room to conjure uncharacteristic mental powers by magic. In a reckless sacrifice, they burn the meeting agenda. They wipe down the whiteboard. They align themselves around a table and await the visitation of divine creative force. Words flow, winds stir…

Creative Problem Solving, Cousin to Brainstorming

Continue reading "Quenching Fires with a Brainstorm"…

In my first “Praise of Folly” post, I talked about some of the antiquarian books in my collection. There’s another I’d like to mention…

Continue reading "In Praise of Folly (cont’d)"…

Distinguishing authentic artifacts from forged or misattributed ones is an essential challenge for archaeologists and art historians. Scientific tests, though, often prove incomplete or inconclusive (or simply misleading). In such cases, the best line of defense against forged artifacts is an expert with a finely honed intuitive sense for authenticity—sometimes called a fakebuster. (In Tetraktys, Dr. Jerusalem is a consummate fakebuster.)

In homage to an important theme in Tetraktys, here is the first of what I plan to make a regular series of fakebusting puzzles.

Can you use your fakebusting skills to figure out which image is real and which is fake?

Greek diadem, circa 300 B.C.

Click here for the answer!

Today is the nationwide U.S. release date for Tetraktys, bringing the long and exhilarating process of writing and publication to fruition.  I hardly imagined that any project could make my doctoral dissertation seem in retrospect like a cakewalk, as giving birth to this book did.  Yet whenever some element of Tetraktys came “right with a click like a closing box” (as Yeats described the satisfying completion of a poem), the experience was one of life’s keenest pleasures. A pleasure exceeded only now by the privilege of sharing my adventures of imagination with you, my readers.

Front Cover of Tetraktys

There are some who perceive a double Tetraktys in the thirteen stars of the Great Seal of the United States. Here it is, on the reverse side of the dollar bill. Each triangle (my overlay) frames the symbol’s ten points.

Detail of the Great Seal on the reverse side of the U.S. dollar bill

Continue reading "Double Tetraktys in Your Pocket?"…

Cultural amnesia is a leitmotif of Tetraktys. Blog posts are usually too brief to breathe life into forgotten cities, religions, and heroes. But they seem the perfect place to spotlight bits of lost history under our noses–in the kitchen.

In the West today, most people know ginger as a substance vaguely commemorated in the names of sweet beverages and foods, like ginger ale or gingerbread. Some cooks use it as a powder; the more intrepid, as crystallized candy. In the East, however, it’s common to handle ginger in its original form, as a root.

Ginger root

Continue reading "A Forgotten Food: Ginger"…