Martians of Science: Five Physicists Who Changed the Twentieth Century Book

Does not seem too unified a book -- more like five biographies loosely tied together. Was mostly interested in von Neumann (and hence skimmed a few parts), but the others are very fascinating individuals as well. Informative, and may serve as a good reference for these group of extraordinary people. As a book, it somewhat fails to capture the excitement of the era, though certain sections, notably the speculative history, were interesting.

Still, the memory of these five individuals seems to be fading these days, and curiously there are not many authoritative English-language works about them. I believe they are still held in high esteem in Hungary but for some reason not so much in America, which is somewhat odd as all of them lived in the USA for most of their productive lives.