Rating: 
Summary: Almost perfect
Review: This is the book I recommend to all my technical friends who are wondering what quantum computing is about. Brown writes with astonishing lucidity and an intense focus on what he's trying to communicate. If this book has a flaw, it's that I think it gives Deutsch and the many-universes interpretation of QM a bit too much airtime. Deutsch's views are well-presented in many other places and it dilutes this book somewhat to spend so much time on him when it really isn't necessary.I don't understand the review that said this book wasn't technical enough. Yes, it's not a textbook for learning how to write quantum algorithms. But it does have detailed quantum circuit diagrams for a number of useful or interesting ones. When I read this book I finally saw enough of the details to "get it". I launched from this directly into the scientific literature without getting too terribly lost. I would recommend this book over Milburn's "The Feynman Processor". Milburn knows his material but he tends to wander a lot. His book is OK and useful, but this one is better. I'd put it in the same class as Gleick's "Chaos".
Rating:
Summary: Almost perfect
Review: This is the book I recommend to all my technical friends who are wondering what quantum computing is about. Brown writes with astonishing lucidity and an intense focus on what he's trying to communicate. If this book has a flaw, it's that I think it gives Deutsch and the many-universes interpretation of QM a bit too much airtime. Deutsch's views are well-presented in many other places and it dilutes this book somewhat to spend so much time on him when it really isn't necessary. I don't understand the review that said this book wasn't technical enough. Yes, it's not a textbook for learning how to write quantum algorithms. But it does have detailed quantum circuit diagrams for a number of useful or interesting ones. When I read this book I finally saw enough of the details to "get it". I launched from this directly into the scientific literature without getting too terribly lost. I would recommend this book over Milburn's "The Feynman Processor". Milburn knows his material but he tends to wander a lot. His book is OK and useful, but this one is better. I'd put it in the same class as Gleick's "Chaos".
Rating:
Summary: Wide-ranging, amusing and insightful
Review: This is the kind of popular science book I would like to see more often. Most popularizations skim over the surface of their subjects without providing enough detail to understand what is really going on. In this book, the author has done a remarkable job in mixing amusing and fascinating anecdotes with philosophical and technical details. His discussion of the evolution of quantum theory is one the best I've read and cleverly interpretated from a computational viewpoint clarifying the link between quantum mechanics and computers - a surprising connection that few quantum theorists imagined until the 1990s...This is an excellent book and one that builds very succesfully on David Deutsch's 'Fabric Of Reality'.
Rating:
Summary: Wide-ranging, amusing and insightful
Review: This is the kind of popular science book I would like to see more often. Most popularizations skim over the surface of their subjects without providing enough detail to understand what is really going on. In this book, the author has done a remarkable job in mixing amusing and fascinating anecdotes with philosophical and technical details. His discussion of the evolution of quantum theory is one the best I've read and cleverly interpretated from a computational viewpoint clarifying the link between quantum mechanics and computers - a surprising connection that few quantum theorists imagined until the 1990s...This is an excellent book and one that builds very succesfully on David Deutsch's 'Fabric Of Reality'.
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