Mentis and Ethos
Solly Book 1
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Pub Date Oct 6 2026 | Archive Date Oct 30 2026
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Description
Solly is a physics PhD drifting through life on raw intellect until a sudden flash of inspiration sends him careening into reinvention and he becomes a writing instructor and the unofficial guide, counselor, and bail bondsman of a Caltech undergrad house.
What starts as an earnest attempt at adulthood quickly derails when Solly stumbles into the orbit of a group of transplanted Frisian toughs running an absurdly ambitious con – using a brilliant but gullible student hacker in an attempt to hijack Los Angeles’s municipal databases and hold them for ransom.
Before long, Solly’s attempts to make sense of the situation become inseparable from his attempts to understand himself in this comedic novel of misfires, bad decisions, romance, and self-discovery.
Advance Praise
“I started reading this book at eight p.m.. I finished it at two a.m. because I couldn't stop turning the pages. Who knew a renowned physicist could also be such an exciting story teller?” –Allen Frances, Professor and Chair Emeritus, Duke University
“Conveys a picture of life at Caltech and in Pasadena that … felt like a fun-house mirror reflection of Tech culture. A fun yarn that made me wonder what my students were doing in those Houses when I was their teaching assistant once upon a time.” –Professor Scott A. Hughes, MIT; Caltech Ph.D. ’98
“Readers will enjoy getting to know Saul Sokolsky (Solly), whose adventures are set within the more universally familiar discovery that creating a meaningful life is best done by serving others, in his case as advisor to an oddball group of CalTech undergraduates.” –Beth Parks, Editor, American Journal of Physics
Available Editions
| EDITION | Paperback |
| ISBN | 9781957917955 |
| PRICE | $19.99 (USD) |
| PAGES | 394 |