Our Mathematical Universe

When his plane was hit by a Serbian missile over Bosnia, Richard Holbrooke saved himself by leaping out of the burning wreckage and without hesitation began to dictate instructions to the Pentagon. Holbrooke has had many other close calls; he survived the firebombing of Tokyo as a boy, dodged bullets during Vietnam and Pakistan, broke his hip in Mogadishu, Africa, and was nearly killed in a car crash. How does he do it? Here is a man with an insatiable voraciousness who eats, drinks, works and plays harder than anyone you know. He who celebrated by eating strange food after Dayton, where he negotiated the end of the Bosnian Civil War, ordered eighty-eight lobsters when Madeleine Allbright won her Senate seat, inhaled three steaks in less than two hours when he and his son Jack visited Ben's Chili Bowl in D. C. , washed them down with fourteen Sambuca shots. A man who has raised millions for Democrats and other politicians from impoverished countries, whose limousine driver could find any Russian restaurant or strip club in Manhattan. Who launched attacks against Rwanda and Sudan from the living room at night?