Meghan’s Reviews > The Maniac > Status Update

It was surprisingly satisfying when von Neumann started to lose his mind. His daughter says "I asked him, point-blank, how he used to be able to contemplate, with total equanimity, the killing of hundreds of millions of people in a nuclear first strike against the Soviet Union, and yet he could not face his own mortality with any sense of calm or dignity. 'That is entirely different,' he replied." And that's why.

"All that maddening, unthinking optimism."