Rating: 
Summary: Brilliant and quirky
Review: Some years ago a friend attended a lecture given by Douglas Hofstadter when Hofstadter was in residence at the University of Michigan. What was the lecture about, I asked my friend. "I don't know," he replied, "and neither did he".
Hofstadter is like that. There's a lot going on in that mind, and not all of it reaches his reader. GEB is a book that acheived a degree of fame for its sytle, wit, and to many, appearance of total incomprehensibility. Scores of readers seem to have skimmed over it, without actually absorbing the central thesis. What's going on here?
GEB is actually, as Hofstader himself says, a theory of artifical intelligence. Along the way he gives the reader an excellent explaination and demonstration Godel's incompleteness theorem ( necessary for his thesis) and illustrates his central thesis with examples drawn from unexpected sources- Escher becomes his visualization of recursion, and Bach demonstrates permutation; ants are his models of neurons, each following a deterministic program, and yet acting intelligently as a group.
The thesis was, perhaps, a bit too radical when it was introduced- and perhaps a bit too obscure for most readers to follow, or even to realize that there was an overall thesis in the book. Today, though, there's an entire industry (it seems) of researchers and theoreticians exploring "alife" and complexity and other issues Hofstadter explored back in the 70s in GEB. I first read it back in the 70s when it first came out; rereading it now, in the light of work by Holland, Kaufman et al, it takes on a new clarity and prescience.
Rating:
Summary: Got to read it!
Review: if there was 12 i would rate it that way.
great book in all respects, the author does a great job of writing about math and paradoxes in such a way that even one without any prior math education can enjoy the book.
stimulating for the mind.
read it!
Rating:
Summary: buy this book. buy ten. tell your friends.
Review: probably the greatest book i've ever read. 700+ pages of pure genius
Rating:
Summary: This book is simply OUT OF RANGE. I rate it 11.
Review: Can't be described with adjectives, but I'll try. This is, simply put, a book that everybody interested, or potentially capable to understand top level as well as obscure and inner relationships between mathematics, Information Technology, language theory, music, brain structure/thought processes, and genetics definitely HAS to read. I especially liked, or better to say, loved, this book because many concepts in it were exactly the written-down versions of some vague thinking I had done, often unconsciously, in the past, being engaged or interested in most of those knowledge fields. Seeing those ideas dumped to a book available to anybody in such a clear, straightforward form, was really shocking for me at first. After having read the book don't-know-how-many times, the summer was finished. I then realized this book absorbed me in all of my free time. There is almost nothing, even in such a huge book, I could disagree. Perhaps the interleaved form in which concepts are presented confused me at first, but once the reader gets used to this layout (pardon! PATTERN), it greatly adds to the fun of reading on and to the percent of understanding of the underlying analogies between so many different worlds. Years after having read this book, thanks to a congress in Milan, I had the incredible chance to host Douglas and his children at my home for an unforgettable dinner. Needless to say, my copy of "G.E.B." now has Douglas' autograph on it.... what a honor!
Rating:
Summary: Gödel, Escher Bach, An Eternal Golden Braid - READ IT!
Review: The book is so incredibly good: I've read it at least 5 times. My friends have all read it. I met Hofstadter at a local bookstore where he signed books...the man's a genius. The book explains the presence of symbols and patterns as necessary an unavoidable, structuring everything down to the very tiniest intricacies. If you love AI, insightful reading, intellectual topics, or you just need a good book to read while snuggled up in a blanket and sipping a cappuccino, get this one. WOW
Rating: 
Summary: Detailed table of contents
Review: http://www.cybtrans.com/philosph/geb.htm
http://www.cybtrans.com/philosph/fluidcon.htm
Rating: 
Summary: Overrated. Trivializes and obscures some important ideas.
Review: This grossly overrated book has little to recommend it. Rather than clarifying the important ideas of Godel, Turing, and others, H makes them _harder_ to understand by embedding them in a hodge-podge of unfunny jokes, half-baked analogies, and bad writing
Rating:
Summary: Spectacular -- Written on so many different levels.
Review: An eternal golden braid is correct -- this Pulitzer Prize
winning book is more than that; it is science, dialogue,
novel, comp. sci textbook, poetry, all simultaneousoly.
The content is above belief, but, as if that was not enough,
the style in which Hofstadter writes is phenomenal.
Rating:
Summary: If you enjoy thinking, this book is for you.
Review: This book was originally published in 1980 and reissued in 1989. I read it for the first time in 1981 and have re-read parts of it numerous times over the years. It is challenging and very enjoyable if you like logic, mathematics, music or just about any intellectual activity. Don't expect to absorb it all in a single reading, or maybe even in multiple readings. Do expect to read slowly, to stop and think frequently, to keep a pencil and pad handy and to use your mind. Also expect to learn some truly amazing mathematical philosophy if you're not already a mathematician. This book won, and truly deserved, the Pulitzer Prize. It would be difficult to find a better value
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful, engrossing, classic, seminal.
Review: Even though Thomas Cleary claims Hofstadter doesn't really grok Zen, any serious student of the nature of the mind should read this Pulitzer-Prize winning labor of love.
--Richard Brodie, author, Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Mem
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