Rating: 
Summary: Might really be for academics - movie complements it well
Review: Like many other reviewers, I only read "A Beautiful Mind" (ABM) because
of the outstanding movie that very much deserved the awards it won this past
year. After reading the book I have even more praise for the choices the
creators of the movie had to make to condense John Nash's story into a
couple of hours. The movie is serious and thoughtful, for sure, but the real
story of the Nash family makes the movie seem almost tame. I do not think that a book of this scope can be fairly judged in one
reading, which is why I felt I had to read it twice before writing a review. Overall
ABM is very well written, more than complete, thoroughly researched, compelling, and
interesting historically. ABM also contains many interesting, relevant references to
other books, has poignant quotes from great thinkers like Nietzsche (start of Ch. 17),
and excels when the author uses fictional works by authors like Kafka ("The
Trial," etc.) to illustrate Nash's dilemmas. It is difficult, for me at least, to separate my reaction to the book from my
reaction to Nash's personality. I found myself getting very angry at parts of
Nash's "inconsistent" personality. One of the best examples can be found on p. 114.
In one paragraph a prominent mathematician "frequently told others that Nash had
greater insight into mathematical structure than any mathematician he had
ever known," while the last paragraph begins, "Some people found Nash absurdly childish." Over and over we read how Nash is the rare genius who sees the whole
picture, but arrogant in the extreme, and apparently would often have nothing to do
with people whom he does not judge to be at his level. He also wants to be an
academician, but from what I remember is considered a very poor, unfair teacher
in every reference in the book. He fathers a child with a woman whom he does not
marry, and then at least twice she has to force him legally to pay child support. Ms. Nasar seems to alternate between hero worship (I so tired of reading the
overly detailed descriptions of the afternoon teas at Princeton) and tearing her
hero down, to pieces. Instead of telling us about Nash's faults so often I wish
she had consulted with someone who really understands Nash's vast contributions and
written chapters detailing those - even if some equations had to be presented. She
offers many examples of why Nash surely deserves to win the Nobel Peace Prize, including numerous compliments by sundry academicians, but again often w/o adequate
details. The discussion of game theory, von Neumann's version vs. Nash's, is explained
well in the prologue, and chapters 9 and 10. Yet I wish she had given one concrete
example of the "Nash equilibrium" - perhaps the FCC auction discussed in Ch. 49 was,
but it is not so stated. I also compliment the author on her well-researched, balanced discussion of not
only Nash's schizophrenia but on many aspects of mental illness. From what I know
about the subject she covers the topic well, and indeed shows how, like the movie
depicts, Nash's recovery (remission?) is remarkable. For what it's worth, like
Nash, I also have a connection with Roanoke, VA, and mental illness. If there is a hero in the Nash story, it is undoubtedly his wife, Alicia,
to whom the book is dedicated. Mrs. Nash, a former physics student at MIT who
thinks she has a bright future with a handsome, outstanding mathematician (the book
says "a genius with a ..."), finds herself in a horrible predicament: close
to giving birth to her first child, her husband goes almost completely crazy
in a period of a few months. Though Nash's fellow mathematicians repeatedly
try to find him suitable work, even in the worst periods of his sickness, Alicia
carries the burden of dealing with Nash on a daily basis (other than their
separations), cares for their child (who very sadly ends up suffering from a
worse case of schizophrenia than his father!), and supports the family financially
at the same time. When Nash is suffering through the lowest point in his illness,
c. 1970, with no one else to turn to, Alicia takes him in as a "boarder" (she had
divorced him years before), and provides him a stress-free life so that he can at
least try to work out his problems. If Nash does indeed recover it is Alicia who
deserves much of the credit. I don't think that the speech in the movie actually
happened, where Nash, upon receiving the Nobel, gives his wife the credit for
being his salvation, but it is certainly true to the story in the book. And I
remember Jennifer Connelly saying similar words about Mrs. Nash's
inspiration in her acceptance speech at the Oscar's. I do recommend "A Beautiful Mind," the movie and the book, but please have
patience and skim where you feel you must!
Rating:
Summary: The Hubris of Genius
Review: This biography of the Nobel Prize winner and schizophrenic mathematical genius John Forbes Nash surprisingly brings to mind the main character in Dostoyevsky's great novel, "Crime and Punishment." Like the intense, reclusive student, Raskolnikov, Nash in this biography comes across as an extremely anti-social and arrogant young man, convinced that his genius gives him certain rights and freedoms beyond the petty restrictions, rules, and manners that govern normal human conduct. But whereas Dostoyevsky's character commits a murder, Nash's main offense is merely to be an arrogant and boorish lout, forever trying to show off to his fellow students at Princeton. When he is later struck down by mental illness after achieving so much so young, we can't help feeling there is an element of hubris involved. Nash also fits into the popular paradigm of the lop-sided genius, the person of incredible talents who can't deal with the simpler aspects of daily life. As in the case of the notoriously absent-minded Albert Einstein -- whom Nash meets in the book -- or the equally eccentric Isaac Newton, we somehow feel reassured that these supreme geniuses have their weaknesses. For all these reasons, this is a story that resonates on a mythic and psychological level. We keep rooting for Nash, but also secretly look forward to him tripping up. This reflects the ambivalent attitude to the sciences that most people have -- we are both intrigued by new discoveries but afraid of their ramifications. Around the age of 30, Nash's quest to find greater meaning in the Universe sparked off his insanity as he started to discern complex codes implanted by extra-terrestrials in the random occurrence of certain letters of the alphabet in daily life. But, although this is essentially a tragedy of a brilliant mind struck down by schizophrenia, it is nevertheless one with a happy ending. After paying his dues for his genius and arrogance, Nash gradually recovers and receives his apotheosis in the 1994 Nobel Prize for economics. Movies and books are radically different media, so don't expect this to read like the recent Oscar-winning movie that it inspired. The expansiveness of the written word allows for much more detail to emerge as well as countless digressions and forays into the worlds of science and mathematics that the movie had no space for. So, if you saw the movie and loved it, this biography still has plenty to offer.
Rating: 
Summary: Fascinating
Review: I bought this book after watching the movie. As most people, I loved the movie, but in my experience, movies are always very different from the book. This is no exception; however, the book is sooooooo interesting. I majored in economics, and the books goes into great detail in the economics/mathematical explanaition, which I loved. The book shows you exactly what John did, what his fantasies were (he believed he was in touch with aliens, he divorced Alicia, he had an illegitimate son, and was bisexual), his challenges, and how he recoverd from illnes. Honestly, I fell in love with John Nash. He had a hard life.
Rating:
Summary: A fascinating tale, especially in contrast with the movie
Review: I read this book during this past summer, having never seen the movie (which I suppose makes me part of a minority of people in America). It took me about two weeks to read, and left quite an impression on my mind. But the significance of the book didn't really hit me until I saw the movie, and realized how Hollywood had changed, and in my opinion, cheapened the story of John Nash.
In the book, it is clear that while Nash is most certainly a genius, he is also quite a bastard. His arrogance, lack of social skills, and often quite cruel nature are key elements of who he is, and they are all sugarcoated or wiped away entirely in the movie. So in the book, I found myself repulsed by Nash's personality, and forced to look elsewhere for sympathetic characters (atleast until Nash becomes schizophrenic). And that, it seems, is the appropriate way to try to understand who Nash was, for he derived all his emotional energy from others and gave little back. Nor does Ms. Nasar tell the story from Nash's own perspective, instead relying on those he knew throughout his life (which in fact he remembers little of). And she does a very convincing job of it.
The movie lacks the realism Ms. Nasar worked so hard to achieve, for it turns a story of the many people who helped Nash be who he was into a more typical tale of one man's genius and fall from glory. But I guess this is not a surprise, for Hollywood is all about ego, where as, as Ms. Nasar shows so effectively, the real world is much more complex.
Rating:
Summary: A very good CHALLENGING read ...
Review: ...I am an English major, but this book introduced me to economics and mathematical concepts that I was not aware of. I found the idea that negotiations, either between companies or countries, can be explained mathematically to be absolutely fascinating. I kept thinking -- "I hope people in our government are reading this or know about this." I struggled through the math details of the book, but I enjoyed that because I enjoy a challenge. My son, an engineer, has stated that all things can be explained mathematically, but I disagreed in that interactions between people are unpredictable. Dr. Nash's game theory is a revelation to this non-math major. I shall do more research and reading about his, and others', studies in this field. I was excited to learn of the theory even though I do not have the background to thoroughly understand it. I enjoyed the book enough that I want my own copy so I can re-read parts of it. I am now ready to see the movie, but I doubt that it can be as informative as the book. I have postponed seeing it until I could finish the book -- which took some time because I had to look up quite a few words in the dictionary! Dr. Nash's and his son's disease is heart-breaking. I marvel that a person could come through that with his mathematical interests and skills intact. This was an excellent book. I highly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: A tragedy with a fairy-tale ending
Review: I first read Sylvia Nasar's biography of John Nash shortly after it was released in 1998. I had heard Nasar interviewed on "All Things Considered" while driving home from work one day, and was intrigued by her story of this enigmatic Princeton mathematician who had emerged from the fog of mental illness to win the Nobel prize in economics in 1994. I borrowed the book from the library and remember vividly what a great glimpse it was into the life of a mathematical genius as well as the tormented hell of schizophrenia. When Ron Howard made Nasar's book and Nash's life into a movie last year, I knew instantly it was a "must-see." I enjoyed the movie tremendously, but noted the necessary compromises Howard had to make in telling such a complex story on screen in just two hours. I was motivated to finally buy the book and read it carefully again. A Beautiful Mind is actually three books, intertwined and integrated. The first tells the story of the meteoric rise of the brilliant young mathematician from West Virginia; his college years at Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh, graduate school at Princeton, followed by fellowships at the RAND Corporation and teaching at M.I.T. His mathematical achievements, including his Nobel winning work in bargaining theory, as well as later (and arguably more mathematically significant) work are well covered in terms that will not be overly obscure for a non-mathematician. The second book has to do with Nash's personal life, relationships with family, friends, equally brilliant colleagues, his relationship with Eleanor and their illegitimate child, his marriage to Alicia, their child, and subsequent divorce. The third book details his quirky personality and sudden descent into severe mental illness in 1959, the years of on and off hospitalization, and then the "phantom" years and slow recovery. Nash spent fully 30 years of his life struggling with his delusions, a staggering amount of time lost for such a genius. Nash must still be tormented by the lost promise of what could have been achieved in those years. It is an intensely fascinating story and Nasar shows her mastery of the facts on every page. Many of the years of drifting and roaming the halls of Princeton's math department in the 1970's and 80's were hard to reconstruct, but she gives an excellent feel for what Nash's life must have been like during those dark times. Nasar's book also presents a chronology of the development of psychiatry's understanding and treatment of schizophrenia. We see Nash subjected to involuntary hospitalizations, psychotropic drug treatment, insulin therapy (also graphically portrayed in the movie), psychoanalysis, and more. Through his exploits during the dark years, we get a glimpse of the tormented and irrational thought processes that dominate the mind of affected individuals. And we get a sense of the prognosis - normally quite poor - but in Nash's case marked my an apparent remission that has left his mind relatively intact. Nasar gives fair treatment to the question of post-recovery doubts regarding the initial diagnosis: was Nash really schizophrenic, or did he have some other psychotic condition, but one that has a higher likelihood of recovery (e.g., bi-polar)? The fact that his youngest son was also diagnosed with schizophrenia is telling, since the disorder is now known to have a strong genetic component, but others who look at his history of symptoms already have little reason to doubt the validity of the original diagnosis. This is a compelling story and an extremely well written book. It is a touching account that has both a fairy-tale ending and an overwhelming sense of tragedy.
Rating: 
Summary: A beautiful subject spoiled
Review: This book definitely does NOT read like a novel (contrary to the propaganda on the cover). While the research is exhaustive, it reads like an assembly of facts scribbled on note cards. There's no insight into the person to tie it all togehter. Even worse the descriptions of the Nash's work is unnecessarily shallow even for the layman. I got through this book inspite of the writting, but only because I find the man, his work & his disease so fascinating.
Rating:
Summary: Bad writing
Review: This book is so poorly written, it was hard to follow Nash's life story in any coherent way. Reading it, I kept getting the feeling that John Nash really does have a life story worth reading about - no matter how unlikable he was - but this book wasn't giving it to me. I came into it thinking I was going to love it but by the end of the first chapter I was already annoyed. Why couldn't the author just spit out what she was trying to say? Why so many commas and disjointed ideas in one sentence? Argh! But I kept reading. I soon realized I had no idea what point in his life she was dishing about on any given page. And the way she kept on and on about his homosexuality, or "special friendships," it was reading like the FOX news channel. But written in a tone that tried and failed to be just-reporting-the-facts. You could actually tell what the author thought of the subject and that's kind of creepy in a biography. One whole chapter titled "The Arrest" measured a page and a half in length, one page of which was conjecture. And there were so many contridictions! Nash had no friends, but his best friend was so and so. Nash's neighbor now refuses to admit they were ever friends, but on the next page there's a lengthly quote from the guy about how they worked together for years and played practical jokes on each other. At least I think she was referring to the same person that gave the quote - sometimes she would use a person's first name and then in the same paragraph use their last name or nick name, so it read as two different people. Sometimes she'd begin with a quote or reminiscence by a person she'd never introduced. She'd throw a name in as though it was one of the main characters but it would be unfamiliar. I'd page back through the book to figure out who they were, but no luck. Two chapters later, she'd finally introduce them, long after I'd forgoten the quote they'd produced. Oh it was awful and I was so annoyed. But by the time I'd gotten half way through I had to keep reading, partly because I was so annoyed I kind of felt that if I stopped reading it, the author would win and I'd be defeated. Also I wanted to find something redeeming about John Nash. The other thing that got me about this book was how awful the math explanations were. Most reviews I've read have said that it was a bit fuzzy exactly WHAT Nash got the Nobel prize for. I agree - I thought I knew coming in to the book, now I'm not so sure. Sometimes the author would make a sweeping generalization about someone's theory being applicable to economics or warfare. Sometimes she'd insert a quote from one of Nash's colleagues with incomprehensible technical language and leave it at that, unexplained. Sometimes she'd make a generalization or insert a long technical quote and then attempt to explain using an analogy - a great idea - but the analogy would be so painfully bad that she should really not have bothered. Oh dear. They were really awful. I think this is the first biography I've ever read where I've come away with more of a sense of the author's personality than the subject's. Surely that can't be cool? In authoring someone's biography? Didn't the editors catch any of this? I love biographies of mathemeticians and scientists, but this one is really bad. I'm looking forward to reading a different Nash biography so I can figure out what his life was like, and assemble the disconnected pieces of the Nash life story that this book gave me.
Rating: 
Summary: A Mixed Bag
Review: As a mental health professional who has trained and worked in inpatient psychiatric hospitals, I looked forward to reading about the life of John Nash. I initially found the book fascinating, reading about the many brilliant mathematicians whose lives intersected with that of John Nash and the discoveries he and others made. At some point, though, it started to become a bit confusing because almost everyone encountered was described as brilliant. I could not figure out who were the geniuses of the geniuses, or where Nash's brilliance placed him in this group. The book began to fall apart for me in the second half as Nash's illness progressed. The author's presentation was confused and ultimately frustrating.
Her presentation showed either a real flawed understanding of paranoid schizophrenia, or an intent greater than describing his illness, that of impressing the reader with all the minutia of the author's research- with constant digressions of the bios of every famous or semi-person encountered, popular movements happening in the world at the time which "might" have influenced Nash, using characters from a Kafka novel as a comparison, to including a 5 line quote in French (followed by the English translation). Why?
In Nash's initial hospitalization, it is mentioned the he could have understood what his doctors were thinking (their theories) by talking with the other patients or by his reading selected texts in the hospital's library. While he was schizophrenic?
Another example of the confusion was the description of when Nash's wife desperately follows him to Europe because he is in the throws of his illness, yet leaves him for weeks while she vacations with her sister. Their wonderful time is described and then she returns to throw a party. How ill he was at this time and her motivations for leaving are never explored. Another irritant was the constant use of what we could "possibly assume" to be what motivated someone's actions or what their thoughts were. I often didn't feel that enough specific information was given to make any of these presumptions. Because of these flights of presumption, I lost trust in much of what the author had to say. Again, the result for me was confusion, and seemed to be a case of lack of understanding of Nash's illness, a greater desire to impress with the minutia of too many digressions, or possibly just a case of bad editing.
Rating:
Summary: Idealism and practicism
Review: Whether it is the emperor of Antarctica (Ch. 32) or the citizen of the world (Ch. 38) Nash with schizophrenia was an idealist, why would not he image to be something else, for example, a millionare? Many trained in science are idealists, in the early 90s there was a YSN (Young Scientists' Network) that largely addressed on the discrepancy between idealism as scientis and the praticism of not being able to locate a job in their trained fields. The idealism of scientific originality, creativeness, and working independently clash with the praticism of the "real world" work environment: Doing everything solely for making the bosses happy, presenting oneself (such as at the meetings) is weighed much more than satisfying oneself's inner conscions (much less curiosity), grabbing credits for oneslef and throwing mistakes at others are daily pratices, everyone knows that the resources given by the upper management to the local managers are finite and the local managers try hard to cut spending for themselves' promotions while giving less to the employees. The book has brought people like myself back to the long-time-no-see campus to review our early idealism against our daily practices of the present day, not many people have Nash's love, dedication and perseverance in scientific (or mathematical) research. Then how was Nash able to make a living during the "lost years?" Read the book, it does not avoid these pratical issues while following along with Nash's idealism. The Prize (Ch. 48) is most enjoyable for its inside story of awarding the 1994 Nobel Prize for Economics for Nash, and it also tells the origin of the Economics Prize (not initiated by A. Nobel himself). As far as the movie is concerned, unlike the book, it *has* to be shorter and needless-to-say hinge on the box office value: To sell, that is. I could not help but recall another movie Working Women, in which the wise upper manager promoted the working woman employee and demoted her group manager to lead to a happy endding, while in the "real world" the opposite would happen with a much higher probability. The book A Beautiful Mind is a scholarly biography, by looking at the title I started thinking that it'd be highly pro-Nash, only by reading it page by page do I realize that it is objective and "value free."
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