To Mock a Mockingbird and Other Logic Puzzles: Including an Amazing Adventure in Combinatory Logic

Rating:
Summary: An awesome book
Review: A reviewer of one of Smullyan's other works called him "a national treasure" and I have to agree. To Mock a Mockingbird is a fantastic book -- whether you're looking for fun logic puzzles or a lighter look at formal logic theory. This book is better than any college textbook, and right up there with any of Martin Gardner's best works. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: To Mock a Mockingbird
Review: After a disconnected array of logic puzzles at the beginning, the author embarks on an introductory course to combinatory logic. Given a little application (if you're like me you will need a pen and paper), you can get to grips with some of the fundamentals of mathematical logic with relatively little background. This is pretty astonishing.

The worst feature of the book is the fact that only one (unintuitive) model for the theory is provided. Discussion of the significance of the results obtained is not particularly useful - probably anyone smart enough to solve the puzzles will not find anything there that they couldn't figure out for themselves.

But nevermind: if you want a good introductory course in combinatory logic (or you want to understand (a version of) Godel's 1st incompleteness theorem), then I would recommend this book for you!

Rating:
Summary: The best introduction to combinatory logic I can think of.
Review: Various sets of increasingly sophisticated puzzles & scenarios in a combinatory forest where all the birds are combinators. Great way to understand interesting results from combinatory logic without cumbersome definitions. Mockingbirds are M, which is also YI, Curry bird's response to Identity bird... hilarious.