Founded 100 years ago by the inventor of dynamite, the Nobel Prize is the world's most celebrated and controversial honor. It grants its winners instant celebrity and acclaim for "service to mankind", despite accusations that it is too trendy, arbitrary, and narrow-minded. In examining both its fame and notoriety, Burton Feldman opens up the Nobel institution and process: how it originated, how it works, and how it is influenced by outside pressures (political, moral, personal, and academic).

The Nobel Prize is an extraordinary work that never fails to surprise, provoke, and entertain. This is the only book to explore every aspect of the prize: its founder, its aura, all its fields (literature, physics, chemistry, medicine, peace, and economics), and its laureates' personalities and rivalries, as well as the Nobel's controversies and blunders.