skip to main content
Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid
NY, Basic Books, (1979). A massive book that became an unlikely bestseller, linking the mathematician Kurt Godel, the visual artist M.C. Escher, and the composer Johann Sebastian Bach, and finding symmetries and connections in their works that shed light on cognition, systems, and meaning itself. Winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Inscribed by the author in the year of publication to Arthur Levenson, a mathematician and cryptographer who worked on the German Enigma code during WWII; Levenson was also an early supporter of the Washington Bach Consort. Mild foxing to the edges of text block; near fine in a very good dust jacket, with the usual fading from peach to pale yellow, especially on the spine. Uncommon signed. According to online inventories at Stanford, Levenson had corresponded this same year with Hofstadter's father, Robert, who was a recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics. An interesting association copy of a book that became a cultural touchstone. [#033219] SOLD

All books are first printings of first editions or first American editions unless otherwise noted.