About this item
"Clever, charming, amusing, and just plain brilliant. Ken Krimstein is the most inventive graphic biographer on the planet-and certainly the only one who could explain both Einstein and Kafka. A page turner on gravity and relativity!" -Kai Bird, Pulitzer Prize-winning co-author of American Prometheus, the biography that inspired the Oscar-winning film Oppenheimer. From the award-winning New Yorker cartoonist, a graphic narrative revealing the pivotal year in Prague when Einstein became "Einstein," Franz Kafka became "Kafka," and the world changed forever.. During the year that Prague was home to both Albert Einstein and Franz Kafka from 1911-1912, the trajectory of the two men's lives wove together in uncanny ways-as did their shared desire to tackle the world's biggest questions in Europe's strangest city.
About the Author
I have been drawing cartoons since I figured out how to do Santa back in Mrs. Gilot's first grade class at the Alan B. Shepherd school. This passion followed me through High School, College, and when I started working at Ogilvy & Mather advertising in NYC, I made sure the old man himself wouldn't catch me as I ran from 48th Street to 43rd Street to drop off my cartoons at The New Yorker every Wednesday. After 10 years I broke in to that august publication (it was in May, actually) , but in the meantime, my rejected cartoons had started a nice cartooning career for me. After I got into The New Yorker I started to concentrate on writing as well. When I met, well, won, a meeting with my new agent, Jennifer Lyons, at the Manhattan School for Children Charity Auction, she went ga-ga over my cartoons, we settled on a theme (Oh, those wacky Jews!) and I made the proposal. My editor, Aliza, laughed. So did others. And I've created over 100 new cartoons on this theme. As for the research, alas, it has been a lifetime affliction.My cartoons have been published in the New Yorker, Punch, the Wall Street Journal, Barron's, Narrative, three of S. Gross's cartoon anthologies, King Features' "The New Breed" syndicated panel, Cosmopolitan, Science, Psychology Today, and more. I've written for the New York Observer's "New Yorker's Diary" and has published pieces on humor websites, including McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Yankee Pot Roast, and Mr. Beller's Neighborhood.I'm also an ad-guy in the wannabe Mad-Man mode.I have three kids, a wife, and a cat. Bat left. Throw left.
