Last Hawk

Jacob Burckhardt was born in 1818 in Basel, Switzerland. He studied history at the University of Berlin and taught art history and the Italian Renaissance in Berlin and Basel. His essay, as he called The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, was first published in 1860.

Kirkus Reviews

Another yarn set in Asaro's far-future Skolian Empire (Catch the Lightning, 1996, etc.). This time, Jagernaut Kelric Valdoria, the Emperor Kurj's half-brother, is attacked and disabled by Traders; he crash-lands on Coba, a planet run by women and protected by treaty from imperial incursions. For various reasons (not least because she falls in love with him), Coban Manager Jeha Dahl is reluctant to turn Kelric over to the Skolians. So 20 years pass while Kelric raises a family and, ultimately, precipitates a civil war before he can return to the imperium, leaving behind a daughter who may one day challenge the ruthless Kurj or his successor.

Independently intelligible but likely to appeal most to existing fans.

Catherine Asaro was born in Oakland, California and grew up in El Cerrito, just north of Berkeley. She received her Phd in Chemical Physics and MA in Physics, both from Harvard, and a BS with Highest Honors in Chemistry from UCLA. Among the places she has done research are the University of Toronto in Canada, the Max Planck Institut für Astrophysik in Germany, and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Her research involves using quantum theory to describe the behavior of atoms and molecules. Catherine was a physics professor until 1990, when she established Molecudyne Research, which she currently runs.

A former ballerina, Catherine has performed with ballets and in musicals on both coasts and in Ohio. In the 1980s she was a principal dancer and artistic director of the Mainly Jazz Dancers and the Harvard University Ballet. Catherine still teaches ballet in Maryland.

Catherine's fiction is a successful blend of hard science fiction, romance, and exciting space adventure. She has published more than ten novels, almost all of which belong to her Saga of the Skolian Empire, including The Quantum Rose, which won the Nebula Award for best novel of 2001

Her husband is John Kendall Cannizzo, an astrophysicist at NASA. They have one daughter, a young ballet dancer who loves math.