Was John von Neumann a "terrible" person when he proposed a preemptive war with the Soviets within the geopolitical context of the Cold War? Was he an altruist when he stood by Mandelbrot and defended Oppenheimer (the communist "father" of the atomic bomb), or was he a rigid rationalist when he quietly sowed solutions for the challenges humanity would face in the future? Difficult questions without easy answers for this multifaceted personality, for this unimaginable super-intellect of the 20th century.- Our smart phones and the architecture of computers that mimic our minds,- the relentless winning strategy in game theory and the dynamics of evolutionary biology (from self-replicating spacecraft to xenobots),- the terrifying thermonuclear bomb and the anxiety for our planet,- the unparalleled mathematical intelligence, the eccentric philanthropy, and the gift of enjoying thinking... all bear the indelible mark of the ingenious "Johnny". The mathematical contributions of this Hungarian scientist with "alien" intelligence defined the intellectual currents of our century from politics to economics and from technology to psychology. His ideas were inexhaustible. He shared them generously with Hilbert, Turing, Gödel, Heisenberg, Feynman, Minsky, and all the leading scientists of his time, as he jumped from field to field, providing solutions everywhere. A biography of the tumultuous, breathtaking life of the cosmopolitan visionary John von Neumann and the world he created for us. A "biography of ideas" that electrifies.