by John Fleming (Author) Tom Stoppard is widely regarded as one of the leading contemporary British playwrights, a writer who has earned an intriguing mix of both critical and commercial success. Arcadia is considered by many critics to be Stoppard's masterpiece, a work that weds his love for words and ideas in his early career, with his emphasis on storytelling and emotional engagement in his later career. With its engaging alteration between past and present Arcadia offers a comedic and entertaining exploration of chaos theory, entropy, the Second Law of thermodynamics, iterated algorithms, fractals, and other concepts culled from the realms of math and science. Author Biography John Fleming is Chair of the Department of Theatre and Dance at Texas State University, USA. He has conducted extensive research in the Tom Stoppard Archive at the University of Texas and is the author of Stoppard's Theatre: Finding Order Amid Chaos (University of Texas Press) Number of Pages: 134 Dimensions: 0.5 x 7.5 x 5 IN Publication Date: January 01, 2009