Was John von Neumann a "terrible" person when he proposed a preemptive war with the Soviets, within the framework of his Cold War geopolitics? Was he an altruist when he stood by Oppenheimer and defended Openheimer (the communist "father" of the atomic bomb), or was he an inflexible rationalist when he quietly sowed solutions for the challenges that humanity would face in the future? Difficult questions without easy answers for this multifaceted personality, for this unimaginable genius of the 20th century. - Our smart phones and the architecture of computers that mimic our minds, - the ruthless strategy of victory in game theory and the dynamics of evolutionary biology (from self-replicating spaceships to xenobots), - the terrifying thermonuclear bomb and the anxiety for our planet, - the unparalleled mathematical intelligence, the idiosyncratic philanthropy, and the gift of enjoying thinking... all bear the indelible imprint of the versatile "Johnny". The mathematical contributions of this Hungarian scientist with his "alien" intelligence shaped 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, Godel, Heisenberg, Feynman, Minsky, and with all the leading scientists of his time, as he leaped 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.