Rating: 
Summary: Delightfully Different Than The Movie
Review: The book A Beautiful Mind is delightfully different than the movie. The movie is accurate in principle, but uses artistic license to make a good story and good visual impact. The book was written by a journalist who did extensive research on the life of John Nash, a famous mathematician who developed paranoid schizophrenia. John Nash, the subject of the biography, didn't get involved in the research at all. So it is based on his written statements, and interviews with almost everyone who knew him. Sylvia Nasar has written a wonderfully detailed, yet always interesting, biography of a deeply complex man. To do this she must have interviewed hundreds of people who knew Nash. Fortunately, the author had the full cooperation of Nash's family and quotes heavily from interviews with them. Ms. Nasar is scrupulous in identifying her sources for everything in the book. The number of footnotes concerned me at first. There are over 2,000 numbered footnotes in the 45 page Notes section at the end of the book. However, these are only to identify the author's sources and seldom contain additional material. So they do not disrupt the flow of the book.A Beautiful Mind is good on so many levels. It provides wonderful insight into the whole process of becoming a research faculty. It is also a great informal history of 20th century mathematical research. Although there is a some discussion of mathematical theory in the book, it is written for the general reader and should not be problematic for anyone who has an interest in math. On top of that it is a great biography of a person with a difficult personality and it is a sensitive treatment of schizophrenia. All in all a delightful read if you don't get easily depressed by the tragic illness that changed this man's life. This paperback edition published in 2001 contains an Epilogue that provides an update on events since the original 1998 edition appeared. As such it is preferable because of the additional information it contains.
Rating: 
Summary: So...what is this book about???
Review: I had just finished watching the movie Beautiful Mind and rushed out the purchase this book...I was very dissapointed with it. I was dissapointed in the way the book was written. The first 1/3 of the book reads like a brochure for Princeton, Nash is hardly mentioned. The rest of the book mentions him more, but the author CLEARLY was trying to write the longest book she could by filling it with the most bulls**t she could copy and paste. I found myself skipping over nearly entire chapters due to this. I would recommend the movie instead of this book anyday. The movie makes Dr. Nash look like a genious with some social problems, living an adventerous and romantic life while dealing with a mental illness. The book makes him out to be a COMPLETE jerk, though still a genious, living a life not to terribly extraordinary. I dont know which description is more acurate, but at least the movie is MUCH more entertaining and less frustrating then this book!!
Rating: 
Summary: A Not-So-Beautiful Review
Review: I found the book to be exquisitely written and mostly captivating (with the exception of a few very mathematical parts--which couldn't have been avoided given the subject--which lost me for a few paragraphs); thus my critique is not of the writing, which, as I said, was well done, but of the subject matter. John Nash: he was smart, no one could deny. He came out of an illness as many do not and he won a Nobel--but the character he displayed was morally bankrupt. He held "special friendships" with several men, had an affair and impregnated a woman he would never marry, and slept with the woman he would marry before they were married--and all of these things OVERLAPPED. He was generally in more than one romantic relationship at a time. He refused to pay attention to his older son and at first--until a friend stepped in--refused to even pay child support causing his son to live in foster care and an orphanidge much of his childhood. He treated people as items, and though Nasar has some deep rooted respect and admiration for this man the only thing I found admirable was his younger self, who could be simply described as quirky. As soon as he was in college everything began to go downhill. The writing is fabulous, but this is not a book I'd reccamend reading--simply from Nash's ethical corruption.
Rating:
Summary: A Beautiful Book
Review: This book is sensational. It is because of the quality of the book that an Oscar winning picture was made out of a rather obscure subject. Yet, as many said it before, the book is far richer and deeper than the movie ever was. There are entire decades of Nash life that the movie glossed over. One such example is when he went on several European trips, in the midst of his psychological crisis, and wanted to become a citizen of the World by renouncing his US citizenship. This never made it in the movie. And, how could it. The movie was already long as is. Also, Nash social life is far richer and (clinically strange) than the movie ever made it out to be. At one point, he is courting his future wife, his current girlfriend, and a boyfriend all at the same time. This never made it in the movie either. Russell Crowe was not big on conveying the gay stuff. But, let there be no doubt, Nash was bisexual big time. Nash is a far more perplexing, multi dimensional character in the book than he ever was in the movie. Yet, I loved the movie. I gather that tells you I really enjoyed this book.
Rating:
Summary: Better than the Movie
Review: If you have seen the Academy Award wining movie, "A Beautiful Mind," you are already know the story of John Nash, right? Wrong. While even I have to admit that the movie was great, it was mostly fictional. If you want to discover the real life of John F. Nash, read Sylvia Nassar's biography of the same title. The book is, of course, an actual biography, so may be missing some of the flare and magisty of the movie version. But what it lacks in showbiz fantasy it makes up in profound depth and real life emotion. The biography is not only the life of John Nash, but that of his wife Alicia, his family, and the mathematical community in general. The book may be a bit slow moving in certain chapters, but it is well worth the wait. By the biography's end, the reader will have discovered the life of a man who is far more complex than the one depicted in the movie. A very inspiring read!
Rating:
Summary: More detailed and less romantic than the movie
Review: To begin with a cliche, I enjoyed the book more than the movie. Nasar did a great deal of research in compiling this book. Nash is described as a lot more strange and somewhat more boring than he is in the movie, and Nasar's description is probably more accurate. I think Hollywood did a disservice to schizophrenics by depicting the disease as a lot more romantic than it really is. Nasar has an easy writing style, is insightful, and pays great attention to detail. Highly recommended. Avery Z. Conner, author of "Fevers of the Mind".
Rating:
Summary: Saw the film? Then read the book.
Review: You will not be disappointed. In my opinion, the book is something almost totally different than the film and something in fact pretty much better.
Many of the aspects thoroughly discussed in the book are not present in the film : Nash's childhood with his loving parents; the importance of the University of Princeton to the post-war USA; the prizes Nash won and the many he didn't; the casual relationship Nash had with Albert Einstein and Von Neuman; the many tripis Nash did to Europe; many aspects easily portrayed of the Theory of the Games in which Nash was involved; the relativen second-class category of the Economics Nobel Prize and the history and the intestine political battles before the prize was assigned; the many not so good aspects of Nash's character and his early tumultous relationship with a girlfriend; the fate of Nash's son, etc...
The book is excelent and something you won't let till you have read it till the end and gasping in almost all the pages you read.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful Mind = Beautiful Book
Review: I was truly inspired by both the movie and the book by Sylvia Nasar. Nash is a genius and like most lacked the certain moral fiber, political correctness, and common sense that most humans live confined to which would leave some to dislike him as a person. I do not. I found him to be truly inspirational and magic. This book is informative on many levels and tells in detail of life at Princeton, details of RAND and of the McCarthy days. It touches on mathematical theories that could spark you to learn if you took to looking them up-this book touches your imagination. John Nash was ill. I found the compassion shown to him by his
fellow mathematicians inspiring and well deserved. I also found his wife to be the true hero of the book.
You won't be disapointed in this book. It's a beautiful story. One worth reading.
Rating: 
Summary: The history of Princeton University, not John Nash
Review: This book should have been called "The History of Princeton University" instead of "A Beautiful Mind". I haven't had a chance to see the movie yet so I decided to read the book. I really didn't learn all that much about John Nash. However I did learn about M.I.T, Einstein, Princeton University and other famous places and people. It's not that I was really disappointed but I think the book could have been a lot shorter if it just stuck with the story of John Nash. A lot of chapters in the book didn't even discuss John. It was a good book and I learned a lot of things I didn't know before.
Rating: 
Summary: Not What You Will Expect
Review: I had already seen the movie when I plowed through this biography of the great mathematician John Nash. In my reading, I could not decide if I was reading a book about math or a book about psychology. There is a lot of extra information about other mathematicians and their works that I found irrelevant to the point of the book. A simple focus on Nash, with the story of his life is what I had expected. However, what I got was more information than I was interested. Stick to the movie. It overdramatizes the life of Nash, but it's a lot easier to follow.
| 
