Rating: 
Summary: Golden Indeed!
Review: Following in the steps of his earlier, just as fascinating account linking cosmology and the arts ("The Accelerating Universe"), Mario Livio continues to prove he is one of the most original, exciting and literate writers of popular science today. "The Golden Ratio" is a witty and learned journey generally following the trail of the number Phi, but stopping along the way to take in subjects as diverse as philosophy, history, art, religion, the sciences, architecture, etc. Writing about science in a way that is both knowledgeable and understandable for the common reader is an infamous hurdle, but Livio leaps over it with the greatest of ease, giving clear explanations of every potentially difficult matter and providing the scientific proofs in the appendices, for those more mathematically inclined. Overall, though, it is the great humanity of Livio's worldview that shines through the book and makes it, at least for me, one of the most memorable reads of the year.
Rating:
Summary: Golden Indeed!
Review: Following in the steps of his earlier, just as fascinating account linking cosmology and the arts ("The Accelerating Universe"), Mario Livio continues to prove he is one of the most original, exciting and literate writers of popular science today. "The Golden Ratio" is a witty and learned journey generally following the trail of the number Phi, but stopping along the way to take in subjects as diverse as philosophy, history, art, religion, the sciences, architecture, etc. Writing about science in a way that is both knowledgeable and understandable for the common reader is an infamous hurdle, but Livio leaps over it with the greatest of ease, giving clear explanations of every potentially difficult matter and providing the scientific proofs in the appendices, for those more mathematically inclined. Overall, though, it is the great humanity of Livio's worldview that shines through the book and makes it, at least for me, one of the most memorable reads of the year.
Rating: 
Summary: A bit dry, unfortunately
Review: Given how exciting the discovery of phi in everyday life can be, this book's approach is rather clinical. Spends the first few chapters debunking the finding of phi in historical monuments BEFORE explaining the actual places that it does crop up. Kind of boring. A shame, since the accounts I have read in articles by Isaac Asimov and Martin Gardner are so interesting - I would have hoped a book-length account would expand on these.
Rating: 
Summary: Shame
Review: Good idea, poorly executed. A collection of boring historical facts that won't fire the imagination. Couldn't finish it.
Rating: 
Summary: Fill the books with words but not with content
Review: I bought this book expecting to learn something about phi (mathematically). But it is not up to par. Compare with the other mathematical constant books (pi by Beckmann, i by Nahin, e by Maor, gamma by Havil), this book basically has no mathematical content. A book about a mathematical constant should be written by a mathematician.
Rating:
Summary: A quick read
Review: I can't say I was overly impressed with this book, although it would be a reasonable introduction to the number phi and all the ways it shows up (and may not show up.) But I was looking for something more substantive. Still, it had enough bits and pieces that it was interesting, and it was short enough that it didn't take up too much time to read.
Rating:
Summary: Don't be scared off; it's for non-math folks like you and me
Review: I don't want to repeat what others have written, but I must tell you this is a book that is so reader-friendly that you hardly realize you're being gently led into greater mathematical understanding painlessly. Along the way you learn all kinds of fascinating things about this almost mystical number, phi (which, strangely, was known as tau until about 1900). Livio's writing is a pleasure. He obviously did not simply pile up a lot of facts until they were book-length. The narrative takes an orderly path, moving from concept to concept, tying things together rather like James Burke did in his column, "Connections" in Scientific American, and in PBS documentaries. You start out in Egypt and wind up, say, talking about the music of Bartók or Messaien. I love how this guy's mind works. So, jump in. The water's phine.
Rating: 
Summary: Objective.
Review: I liked it because it's very down to earth. It doesn't get caught on the mystical mumbo-gumbo surrounding this number, it just lets you know all the places (from the shape of galaxies ti the flying patters of birds) where this number appears, and most importantly it explains WHY this number appears in each case.
Rating:
Summary: Meh...It's alright.
Review: I picked this book up off the shelf in City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco thinking it looked interesting. As a physics/mathematics student, I knew phi existed, but didn't know too much about it, and thought this would be a good, entertaining, and still intellectual book. Now, after trudging through this slowly for a whole semester, I know more than I care to about phi, and how it may or may not have been used. I feel that this book tries to do too much - entertain both the curious science-minded people, as well as the casual reader. This causes some conflict in some of his sections where he tries to explain mathematical or scientific concepts without getting too technical. In one section for instance, I felt a bit patronized and bored when he explained the wave-particle duality of light, and in other sections I wished for more equations and less hand-wavy math. This is the hardest thing to do when writing mathematical books for the not-necessarily math oriented person. He tried, and had some mathematical appendices when he didn't want to give equations and full proofs in the text. I appreciated these, and would have felt a bit cheated if he didn't give the proofs and equations there. I also feel like he repeated the same idea a little too often. He gives multiple examples of writers, musicians, and painters, all who have been attributed with using the golden ratio in this work. Far too many times has he come to the conclusion that the golden ration may have been (but probably wasn't) used in this painting, or those pyramids, or that whatever. However, due to the arbitrary nature of where to draw the golden rectangle in the picture, or some other uncertain boundary, it's extremely hard to tell, and we hardly ever know what the creator was thinking when he or she made the object. Therefore, it's almost worthless to try and determine whether a certain artist did or didn't use the golden ratio, which makes about half of his book seem a little pointless. On the other hand, I did enjoy reading about all the applications of the golden ratio in nature and in science, especially the section on Penrose tilings and their application to "quasi-crystals." That sort of stuff really interests me, and he did a relatively good job of explaining it simply. While sometimes an extra diagram or two might have made his point more clearly, it was easy enough to follow without much prior knowledge of the subject. This book will also have plenty of good information for the person interested in the historical discovery of phi and, to some extent, of mathematics itself. It will take you to the ancient Greeks, to scientists of the Middle Ages, all the way to modern physicists. It really does cover a lot of historical material, though I certianly won't remember much of it. There are a lot of names that he covers, but with the index he gives, it should be easy to find out who did what regarding the golden ratio if I should ever need to in the future. In short, it's an alright book; I probably wouldn't recommend it to you unless you really care about phi though.
Rating:
Summary: Great mix of wonder and scepticism.
Review: I've been waiting for a thorough book about phi, and here it is. Livio shows how much he adores phi and mathematics, yet he applies scepticism where necessary, and closes with a worthwhile chapter on the metaphysical foundations of mathematics.
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