Rating: 
Summary: Hodges gets the science right.
Review: One of the difficult challenges for a scientific biographer is to get the science right. When the subject of the biography has contributed to multiple fields, this is even more difficult. Hodges rises to the challenge in this absorbing biography of the great Alan Turing.
Rating: 
Summary: Better than average biography / exposition of Turing's work
Review: Overall an enjoyable book with sensitive treatment of Turing's lifestyle. Whilst the exposition of Turing's earlier work is well structured that of the later years is somewhat less detailed. The closing chapters are less than satisfying, however this may be due to the tradegy of Turing's death. An excellent introduction to the concept of the "Turing Machine".
Rating:
Summary: A well balanced masterpiece
Review: Since a number of the previous reviewers gave excellent reviews, I would just like to highlight a few points. Hodges has done an impressive job in giving a detailed description of the lives of Alan Turing the man and Alan Turing the scientist. Wherever, there is evidence for these two worlds intersecting, Hodges has given clear descriptions of the cross-talk. In addition, he at no moment suffers from the common addiction among biographers to stress the facts out of proportion to make them fit a preconceived opinion of the subject. Hodges has expert knowledge on the subject of Turing's work at all the stages of his career, and does a great job in following the development of Turing's main interests. When it comes to Turing the man, Hodges paints a precise, sympathetic but certainly not sugar-coated portrait. Especially, when it comes to the discussion of Turing's homosexuality and suicide Hodges is exemplary in his non-sensationalistic restraint and objectivity. Together all these attributes result in a very well-rounded and informative biography. For all those interested in the ideas on which the concept of the computer was founded and on Turing's role in the enigma project this book is required reading.
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Summary: The author invites you to browse the Alan Turing website
Review: Thankyou for coming to this page!I'm very glad that Alan Turing: the Enigma is going to be available in the United States again very soon. I also invite you to take some time to browse round the large website I have created to complement the book. The best place to start is at the Alan Turing Home Page(...) When the book is pubIished, you will find my own preface to it pointing to a new section of my website with material linked to the text of the book. For example, I can now give more detail about Alan Turing's crucial role in the Second World War.The Web offers wonderful opportunities for enhancing the role of the printed book, as Amazon has proved, and I am very keen on exploiting it to the full. I am particularly delighted because it is the computer, Alan Turing's universal machine, that is making this possible. I'd also like to say how important the Web has been in leading up to this new edition, and in particular to thank the huge number of American readers of the earlier edition whose emails have been so stimulating and encouraging. As you will have seen, Douglas Hofstadter has written a foreword for this new edition. He was a great inspiration and encouragement in my original work, and he has been a tireless expositor of Alan Turing's philosophy of mind. His web-like Goedel, Escher, Bach also anticipated the way that modern computer power can give so much freedom to the individual to create and communicate. So it is a fine thing to have his foreword to my book, and my web-extension of it, coming together in this year 2000. Anyway, please feel free to browse around my website and its many links. You will find a page on Alan Turing: the Enigma with more details and more reviews at (...) and I definitely hope that these will persuade you to come back to Amazon and order a copy!
Rating:
Summary: interesting portrait of a compelling misfit
Review: The book is well titled as the real Alan Turing was an enigma to many of those who knew him and perhaps even to himself. It is another example of how genius moves to its own rhythms and manages to get noticed in spite of itself.
Turing is, more than anyone else, the father of the modern computer, a man who could visualize something which did not even exist. It was his vision that eventually came to be the most powerful innovation in the last half century. Hodges book explores Turing's entire life and illuminates the context in which apparently arcane and irregular thinking came to have profound ramifications at the right moment and time.
Rating:
Summary: interesting portrait of a compelling misfit
Review: The book is well titled as the real Alan Turing was an enigma to many of those who knew him and perhaps even to himself. It is another example of how genius moves to its own rhythms and manages to get noticed in spite of itself.
Turing is, more than anyone else, the father of the modern computer, a man who could visualize something which did not even exist. It was his vision that eventually came to be the most powerful innovation in the last half century. Hodges book explores Turing's entire life and illuminates the context in which apparently arcane and irregular thinking came to have profound ramifications at the right moment and time.
Rating:
Summary: Essential.
Review: The one and only Turing biography you'll ever need, long enough to satisfy even the most hardcore Turing admirers. Irreproachably researched and thorough. I only wish Hodges offered an abridged version I could recommend to my friends- this book is too detailed for casual readers.
Rating:
Summary: A tale of incredible triumph and terrible tragedy
Review: This is a book that should be read by anyone with an interest in the history of mathematics, computer science or the second world war. Alan Turing, the inventor of the abstract Turing machine, was an incredible individual who is still underappreciated for his accomplishments. The Turing machine is an abstract device that "consists" of an infinite paper tape and a read head that can move forwards and backwards altering what is on the tape. However, despite its' simplicity, so far it has been found to be a model for all aspects of computing. It may prove to be a model for all actions that can be performed by a computer, but that problem is as yet unsolved. It is amazing that he invented it before computers as we know them really existed.
However, his most significant accomplishment was as a principal of the British group who broke the "unbreakable" German codes during the second world war. When people speak about how the British prevailed in that war, the first person mentioned is always Winston Churchill and there is no question that he did more than anyone else to lead them to victory. However, given the limited resources the British had compared to the Germans, the precise knowledge of German intentions allowed the British to concentrate those resources so that they could achieve local superiority. Which was the only way they could win some of the battles. Therefore, it is no exaggeration to say that Turing's contribution to victory ranks as high as that of anyone else other than Churchill. That story alone would have been a fascinating tale, and although we may not be getting the whole story, it is complete enough to understand how valuable his contribution was. That portion of the book is very well done and worthy of being read by anyone interested in how the British managed to hang on long enough for the United States to enter the war.
Unfortunately, Turing came to a tragic end, apparently dying by his own hand after it became known that he was a homosexual. This was after the war and despite his amazing talents and previous contributions, his homosexuality caused him to be branded as a security risk. The cold war was just starting, with the increase in paranoia and baseless accusations. It is very saddening to read about how this incredible genius was hounded to destruction by agents of a nation that owed him so much.
A tale of incredible triumph followed by disturbing tragedy, this is one of the most interesting biographies ever written. Genius is often misunderstood, but it is rarely hounded to destruction. It happened to Alan Turing and this book contains lessons about what can go wrong when people are judged by stereotypes. Given some of the debates that have occurred in the U.S. military recently, it is a lesson that has not yet been completely learned.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing Biography of Powerful Brain
Review: This is a touching biography of mathematician Alan Turing. Hodges has taken the not-overwhelming amount of information that exists about Turing's life and turned it into a revelation of his character. I read this book with great attention and I think of it and its subject often. After I read it, I felt like I really knew the man and all about his fascinating work, his shy truthful nature, his sense of humour, what it was like to be a gay man in England in the middle of the twentieth century, and his loneliness. Hodges clearly has a tender regard for his subject and insight into his thoughts, and sometimes he constructs a window into Alan Turing's heart out of just a few surviving phrases--but it all rings true. There's not a word that strikes you as just speculation and you never get the feeling that Hodges didn't have enough evidence for his assertions--you feel he's got it right every time, that's the way it was. Hodges presents the mysteries about Alan Turing's life, too, most of which are dark but a few merely funny (where _did_ he bury those silver ingots?) Parts of the biography are quite technical and it wouldn't hurt to have someone on hand who can explain the Reimann-Zeta function or whatever. If you have no interest in computer programming, cryptography, mathematics or any science, you can contentedly skip those parts. This book is heart-wrenching partly for the simple reason that I feel I would have liked Alan Turing very much and I wish we could be friends; I wish too that Turing could read his biography--he could laugh at any inaccuracies and set Hodges straight, but he would be immensely pleased at being so well-understood as he never was in his life.
Rating: 
Summary: Tedium
Review: With so many good reviews (5 stars), somebody doesn't know what makes a good book. Maybe its me, but I was so disappointed in this book. If you think this is going to be a great story about the wizards of bletchley park, keep shopping. Its not. Its page after page (600 +) of nails across the chalkboard tedium.
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