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Publications

BOOKS

THE SPY WHO LOVED US

Republished by UMass Press, with a new Preface 

CENSORSHIP IN VIETNAM: BRAVE NEW WORLD

Life in a sunny police state: culture Year Zero
“This book is precious. It makes a real contribution to our struggle for liberty and democracy in Vietnam.” – Bui Tin

THE PREDICTORS

It never dawned on Doyne Farmer and Norman Packard--not when growing up together in the Southwest, not during their hippie grad-school days, not even when applying their collective genius in physics and mathematics to winning at roulette in Las Vegas--that someday they would end up as players on Wall Street, beating the Masters of the Universe from Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs at their own game....

THE EUDAEMONIC PIE

"The story of how a group of young 1970's computer enthusiasts and sunny California intellectual riffraff together developed a complete microcomputer cum communications system for predicting, using Newtonian mechanics, where on a roulette wheel the bouncing ball would halt. Written in the stle of electronic gonzo journalism, the book shuttles back and forth between the group's Santa Cruz commune and the Las Vegas scene."
--The New York Times

"As gripping as it is insanely comedic. ... One is positively awed by the achievement--even The Double Helix, that classic about the discovery of DNA, seems to fade a little in the memory."
--The Cleveland Plain Dealer

NEWTONIAN CASINO

The British edition of The Eudaemonic Pie, with a Postscript updating the story to 1990.

THE SPY WHO LOVED US

Pham Xuan An was a brilliant journalist and an even better spy. A long-time correspondent for Time and friendly with many of the legendary reporters covering Vietnam, he was an invaluable source of news and font of wisdom on all things Vietnamese. At the same time, he was a masterful double agent, a North Vietnamese operative whose secret reports were so admired by Ho Chi Minh that he clapped his hands with glee on receiving them and exclaimed, “We are now in the United States’ war room!” An inspired shape-shifter who kept his cover in place until the day he died, Pham Xuan An ranks as one of the preeminent spies of the twentieth century.

VIETNAMERICA: The War Comes Home

"In his exactly rendered, dramatic account of the lives of the children we fathered in Vietnam and left to the mercies of fortune, Thomas Bass lays bare the souls of two nations. His chronicle of unforseen consequences is a troubling, unflinching, profoundly humane achievement; it will undoubtedly prove to be one of the essential documents about that war and, by implication, all wars."
--Tobias Wolff

CAMPING WITH THE PRINCE And Other Tales of Science in Africa

"One of the refreshing strengths Bass brings to what I suspect was a labor of love is that his real heroes are Africans: bright, educated, dedicated, and optimistic. ... His optimism is based not on the proximity of solutions but on the fact that a new generation of post-colonial Africans--scientists and others--are taking the lead in grappling with the problems that control their destiny."
--Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Bass's book is not simply science writing. Like the researchers with whom he journeys, Bass has learned the effectiveness of combined interests. The result is a tangy verbal concoction: one part science, one part travel, two parts bemused, yet impassioned observation."
--The Christian Science Monitor

REINVENTING THE FUTURE: Conversations with the World's Leading Scientists

Iconoclasts, rebels, and Nobel prize winners talk about science as the dominant metaphor of the twentieth century.

ARTICLES