Rating: 
Summary: Some difficulties with this biography of John Nash...
Review: This biography is unusual in several respects. First, it is relatively uncommon for an unauthorized biography of a living person to receive this sort of attention. I certainly don't dispute that the subject of this biography is certainly interesting (if not always admirable), but as a biography, it is certainly missing some essential contribution and one must wonder why Dr. Nash did not participate more actively in the production of a story of his life.As a result, nearly all of the voluminous citations in the text refer to private correspondences or private interviews with some of Nash's contemporaries. One can hardly be too critical of this, of course, but it also makes it nearly impossible to decide whether the biographer has correctly interpreted the results of these interviews. Charity demands that we assume that she neither intentionally nor carelessly misconstrued any information she received, but it does leave the reader with very little opportunity to veryify the claims made. This would not be so troubling if there were not so many egregious errors in the explanatory portion of the text. As one reader noted, Fermat was NOT a co-discoverer with Newton of the calculus. The simultaneous discovery of the calculus by Leibniz and Newton is among the best known cases of simultaneous discovery in the history of science, and led to long and bitter acrimony between Newton and Leibniz (Newton being seemingly convinced that Leibniz has somehow stolen his ideas). Elsewhere, the author makes use of the term "Gedanken experiments" to refer, apparently, to the ability to make rapid calculations in one's head. This is simply not the way in which that phrase is used in the philosophy of science, where it is quite a common term; rather, it refers to experiments which either are nor, or cannot be, physically realized (e.g., Einstein's use of the equivalence of gravity and uniform accelleration of an elevator in his (popular) exposition of general relativity), but from which consequences can be deduced. More appallingly, Ms. Nasar simply gets some elementary mathematics wrong, as when she refers to the general equation of a circle and the equation for an hyperbbola. In the first case, she gives the equation only for the "unit" circle, and in the second case, the equations if just flat out wrong. XY=1 is just NOT the general equation for the hyperbola. I regret that these expample do not exhaust the problematic parts of Ms. Nasar's exposition. Is this being picky? I'm not sure. I certainly believe that her editors should have caught such errors before the book went to press, but if such elementary mathematical errors abound, how much much credance can we give to her exposition of far more complex mathematical concepts and issues? Indeed, it causes me to be somewhat uneasy about other facts or interpretations which cannot be independently verified. Now, I don't imagine that the book grossly distorts Dr. Nash's unhappy life, but I'd be a lot happier if I was certain that the inattention to detail was not replicated in sources to which I have no access. This being said, the book does introduce a wide audience to a very unusal man and a very unusual time in American science, and so I think the book is worth reading. But I'm not ready to bet large sums of money on the accuracy of any of the details. That the movie is even more cavalier about detail than the book is not any great surprise; the movie is still quite enjoyable and worth viewing, but I would look forward to a somewhat more rigorous account of Dr. Nash than this biography provides.
Rating: 
Summary: No Nobel for Most
Review: I am a big fan of hard core technical (geek) books, and lacking the time, rarely wander into "popular" literature. This book was a notable exception, partly because of what one might term a strong de ja vu - effect, and definitely because it is so well written. I strongly recommend it. As a person who has vivid recall of his own schizophrenic episode in high school, this was really powerful stuff. I was lucky, there was someone who recognized what was happening to me (a high school counselor by the way). I recovered with old fashioned "talk" therapy and the support of family and friends. My sister was not so lucky, she had her breakdown after finishing college and leaving home. Today she is in need of drugs, but will not take them. While laudable for drawing attention to the disease, most victums wander the streets of the earth as "homeless", or "alcoholics", or worse. If you read this book or go to the theatre and see the movie, and are moved to tears, will you give something to the next homeless person you see, or will you avoid eye contact and walk or drive past?
Rating:
Summary: A BEAUTIFUL MIND IS A BEAUTIFUL STORY1
Review: I read the book before seeing the movie and could not believe how different one was from the other. While I preferred the book to the movie, both spun a very real tale of what it is like living on the edge with schizophrenia. The book was more in-depth and the details and characters were rich and vibrant. The movie, on the other hand, contained segments which painted a rather over-dramatized, Hollywood view and many of the intimate details were lost. The book tells of Nash's younger years, his college years, his illness and recovery. One will be touched deeply by the story and it will, no doubt, be one you will remember for years to come. It is sensitive, inspirational and highly emotional reading. The book contains well-developed characters and weaves a beautiful story from start to finish. "A Beautiful Mind" is highly recommended and deserving of far more than five stars in the rating.
Rating:
Summary: Must Read
Review: I have seen the movie, and found it to be a wonderful movie. Then I ordered and read the book. They are two different stories with similar charactors. The book provides a story on many different levels. The base level is that of John Nash as a person, and his brilliance, at college, at Princeton, then at MIT, then his fall into mental illiness. There is also a wonderful story of the Mathematical community of the world and how it became centered in Princeton. The story of mental illiness of well worth reading. Then the story of how Noble prize winners are chosen is also interesting. One is struck by the normal problems of how the Nashs struggle with money problems though the years. The Nashs took the Nobel prize money, and put a roof on their house. Well worth reading. Do not be put off by the math. It is written so you can read it and understand it, or just pass over it and pretend you understand it.
Rating:
Summary: In depth Look into the Mind of Troubled Genius
Review: A Beautiful Mind flows with excellent writing and in depth details of the trouble genius John F. Nash. As some reviewers have stated the author does go into a lot of Nash's works and other mathematical problems but you won't feel overwhelmed and you don't need to be a mathematician to keep up. I very much enjoyed the author's explanations of not only his work but also the people he encounters and the issues of times. She just doesn't mention names but gives a few pages of that person or even a chapter before going into how they interacted with or affected Nash. My recommendation is to see the movie first before reading the book. The movie is wonderful but does not hardly touch the detail of this fine writing, I believe you would critique the movie too much if you had already read the book.
Rating: 
Summary: CITOYEN DU MONDE or ZARATHUSTRA IN ANTARCTICA
Review: Sylvia Nasar's biography of John Nash, Jr., A BEAUTIFUL MIND, is an easier book to recommend than to read, strange as that may sound. It may be the first such work which I feel actually suffers from over-research. The names of obscure mathematicians, physicists, theorists, and sundry Princetonians crowd nearly each and every page, a torrent of pronouns raining down until one starts to get that lost-in-a-crowd feeling. Nasar would have done better (and trimmed the page count nicely) had she concentrated more intensely on the half-dozen or so really important people in Nash's life instead of taking us for this long escalator journey where so many dim ghosts are met only in passing.
Unlike many, I read the book, then saw the movie. Ron Howard's film is far more concerned with Nash's disease, paranoid schizophrenia, than with Nash. Huge blocks of Nash's life are, understandably, left out--his premarital affair resulting in a son he never cared for, his apparent bisexuality and often bizarre relationships with other men his age, a sure propensity for mental cruelty, and so on. Nasar's Nash, especially the younger man, is bloodless, cold, unfeeling. The more words Nasar employed to discover something human and constant in her man, the more I was convinced she would never find any.
Yet, there is something extraordinary at work here. Something that keeps you there for this long and often confusing and contradictory ride through the perils and boredom of high academia, genius, and madness. It's a common belief that genius and madness must always be close neighbors if not cohabitors. In his Nobel autobiography, John Nash observes: "Without his 'madness,' Zarathustra would necessarily have been only another of the millions or billions of human individuals who have lived and then been forgotten." Maybe that's it.
Rating:
Summary: Much More In-Depth Than the Movie
Review: The movie "A Beautiful Mind" was, well, beautiful. But Ms. Nascar takes us way beyond what the movie touches upon, offering much more insight and information about the man John Nash, his career, his love for his wife, and his fight for mental health. Can get a bit technical, but it's a very good book and worth the read.
Rating:
Summary: An Absorbing Read
Review: I bought this book when it was first published a few years ago, but it remained on my shelf. With all the talk about the movie, I decided to read it and then see the movie. The book was truly absorbing, in that it showed not only John Nash's descent into schizophrenia but also gave insights into the life of faculty in academic mathematics. When I later saw the movie, I felt I really knew him from having read the book earlier. It's an amazing tale of resilience, both of his own as well as his ex-wife's, and of the value of community, since it seems that what he gained back in the halls of Princeton later helped to restore him. It's exciting to me, being employed in higher education, to see this kind of deep, highly technical story, having an audience in our world.
Rating:
Summary: More than just biography...
Review: When I saw _A Beautiful Mind_ I suspected that the truth behind it was much more interesting and a lot grimmer. I was right on both counts; I was wrong, though, in expecting the story of a man I could identify with in any way. To me this is the main appeal of biography, getting pulled along in the subject's intellectual and emotional development. Of course, Nasar is not able to offer this angle because she never actually interviewed Nash, and his emotional/social isolation prevented anyone from really knowing what was going on in his head. Nash *is* consistently characterized as insensitive, so don't expect to have much sympathy for him. That being said, I nevertheless found myself completely absorbed by this book, and that's because Nasar describes in it an entire fascinating subculture--that of the mathematical elite of the late 40's and 50's. She pays careful attention to settings and history. At first you wonder why she is doing things like reconstructing Princeton from the bottom up, but quickly you get pulled into the evolution of this world where logic is the currency and geniuses and their ex-social-misfit grad students are aristocracy. I personally have no real interest in mathematics, but I found that I slipped into Nasar's reconstruction of this period with little effort. She includes an appropriate quote by Sylvain Cappell: "All mathematicians live in two different worlds. They live in a crystalline world of perfect platonic forms. An ice palace. But they also live in the common world where things are transient, ambiguous, subject to vicissitudes. Mathematicians go backward and forward from one world to another. They're adults in the crystalline world, infants in the real one." This was the world of Nash and his colleagues; they had unique access to insights most of the rest of us couldn't begin to understand, and they made their discoveries against the intense backdrop of the nuclear arms race. Nasar successfully captures the accompanying intensity and drama, which to me was at least as interesting as Nash's personal story. Needless to say, my enjoyment of the book diminished as Nash's condition deteriorated, although the interwoven perspective of his wife Alicia (who is a fascinating character in her own right) held my interest. During the last 40 pages, which are about Nash getting his Nobel, I lost interest--there was too much detail that didn't feel relevant. 3 stars overall, and an extra for the absolutely thrilling first 200 pages.
Rating:
Summary: A Martian Told Me to Read This Book
Review: Saw and tremendously enjoyed the movie, but kept thinking, this can't be the real story of John Nash. As impressed as I was with director Ron Howard's construction and Russell Crowe's acting, I still left the theater with too many questions...and doubts. For the first time I can recall, I departed a movie and went directly to a bookstore to buy the book. (I'm still 100% on never purchasing a soundtrack CD from one of those theater vending machines.) This is NOT the same story as the movie. Nasar's biography of Nash is a thoroughly researched, riviting story that took me to worlds I've never known (advanced mathmatics and severe mental illness). It is a fast-paced read, a book I could not put down. There has been controversy about some of the details from the book being left out of the movie, but I think Ron Howard departed masterfully from the book to provide the escence of Nash's story without bogging down in some confusing issues that Nasar, in a book form, handles with appropriate detail and context. Watch the movie and read the book. Both are great. But they are different.
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