"Founded by the brilliant, misanthropic inventor of dynamite, the Nobel Prize has for a hundred years claimed to identify the summit of human achievement. But what exactly is the Nobel Institution? How does it choose its winners? Has it ever made a mistake? An why does the prize hold such importance?".

"The Nobel Prize considers these questions while taking us on a tour of every aspect of Alfred Nobel's grand legacy: its founder, its aura, its fields of award - literature, physics, chemistry, medicine, peace, and economics - and its laureates' personalities and rivalries, as well as its biases, controversies, and blunders."--BOOK JACKET.