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shailydc's review against another edition
2.0
Nasar included every. last. detail. she found about John Nash (and everyone he knew in his life) in this book, which made it incredibly boring and a drag to get through.
Unrelated to the rating, but important to mention: Nash was a mathematical genius. He was also a complete jackass.
Unrelated to the rating, but important to mention: Nash was a mathematical genius. He was also a complete jackass.
kauther's review
5.0
This book is very enjoyable. It goes into very interesting details of John Nash's life, and really compliments John's character as a person and as a mathematician.
rickwren's review
5.0
How did it happen that John Nash came out of severe schizophrenia? That may be one of the great mental health mysteries of our time. It never happens - well almost never, so rarely that his case is the exception making the rule. And such a celebrated brilliant man. His work is beyond belief, he thought about the world in unique ways, in ways a normal mind can't comprehend. But it wasn't the shape of his thoughts that caused the disease, nor is it that which caused the disease to go into remission.
The book is fascinating - it does justice to the man who changed .. . changed is the wrong word. Instead he validated economics as a real study - a science. A generation produces a handful of true geniuses and even deprived of half of his life, we got a real one in Nash.
The book is fascinating - it does justice to the man who changed .. . changed is the wrong word. Instead he validated economics as a real study - a science. A generation produces a handful of true geniuses and even deprived of half of his life, we got a real one in Nash.
raj_8102018's review against another edition
5.0
The movie has been one of my favourites, and now the book is one. It had more intricate details of John Nash's life at Princeton and MIT. I never knew of the interactions between John Nash and other great minds like Albert Einstein and John Von Neumann. The latter parts of the book were inspirational. Forcing an illness into remission and achieving great things indicates how all is not lost when things are not going our way. A Beautiful Mind is A Beautiful Book!
coronaurora's review
4.0
After the abominable feature film on his life that misrepresents and sanitises to the point of defamation, I had been yearning to read this biography of this living genius for years. Much to my relief, there is much I found to applaud in Nasar's granular recounting of John Nash's life and times.
Not least of its victories is that it does not shy away from exposing the unpleasant edifices of his personality: abandoned children, arrogance, entitlement, elitism, sexism: it's all here. Then there is his own hypocritical acting out of his sexuality: inwardly bisexual, outwardly heterosexual which Nasar perceptibly enough manages to mesh within a historical and cultural context. In fifty bite-sized chapters, she summarises countless testimonies, speeches and interviews of all those who have lived, tolerated, hated, or as much as brushed or heard of Nash. While some of her academic summation veers into dangerous territory of personality speculation and convenient joining-the-dots, there is an understatement in writing that grounds the often hialrious certainty. While very diffuse, Nasar is just-about able to give us a rare peek into a particular kind of focussed derangement of idea-infested individuals like Nash and how valued his "original" thinking and problem solving was, both for critics and collaborators. She evokes the sequence of institutional and city scapes over the years with the flourish of a seasoned novelist, although her similar attempts at sketching the multitude of humanity (and literally, their grandmother!) who as-much-as brushed Nash is often baffling and sag the book with un-needed detours.
Another high point of the book is that it offers the reader a delicious sideways ingress into the world of academia and its mores. With research and educational institutions erected in post-war America to facilitate advancement in defence and nuclear armament, and Nash having the opportunity and talent to spearhead some of the panels feeding directly or tortuously into these initiatives, the politics and atmosphere amongst the intelligentsia is revealing. Equally instructive is the bookmarking of various intellectual fences being scaled to newer pastures of no-return: the instatement of rigour and mathematics into the discipline of economics, the repercussions of which we are all privy to in this information age; the newer layers of axioms in disciplines of mathematics; the management of schizophrenia both pre-and post-use of anti-psychotic drugs (insulin-shock therapy!) and finally, the workings of the clandestine Nobel Prize committee. It's testament to Nasar's research that the book manages to inform on all these milieus are as alive as the chief mortal.
My one issue with the book is that while it's filled-to-gills with a reconstruction of John-Nash-the-person-perceived-by-others, his work in mathematics gets an unimpressive treatment. The embedding theorem, the Nash equilibrium, singularity theory and differential equations: they are all described in a cryptic and presumptively high-handed manner, thrown at the unsuspecting reader with no simplification. This could have better dealt with by a paragraph or two of context setting in accessible language of the parent fields to inflame some curiosity among the non-mathematically inclined readers. Nasar does attempt something to this effect half-heartedly when explaining the Game Theory but that's it. Nash's work, other than his mental illness, have been the key qualification for this biography, and watching this aspect not as carefully dealt as his other facets of life stop this from being a perfect biographical account. Still, it's a comprehensive, layered and balanced account of a living genius who continues to work and contribute to the world. Well worth a read.
Not least of its victories is that it does not shy away from exposing the unpleasant edifices of his personality: abandoned children, arrogance, entitlement, elitism, sexism: it's all here. Then there is his own hypocritical acting out of his sexuality: inwardly bisexual, outwardly heterosexual which Nasar perceptibly enough manages to mesh within a historical and cultural context. In fifty bite-sized chapters, she summarises countless testimonies, speeches and interviews of all those who have lived, tolerated, hated, or as much as brushed or heard of Nash. While some of her academic summation veers into dangerous territory of personality speculation and convenient joining-the-dots, there is an understatement in writing that grounds the often hialrious certainty. While very diffuse, Nasar is just-about able to give us a rare peek into a particular kind of focussed derangement of idea-infested individuals like Nash and how valued his "original" thinking and problem solving was, both for critics and collaborators. She evokes the sequence of institutional and city scapes over the years with the flourish of a seasoned novelist, although her similar attempts at sketching the multitude of humanity (and literally, their grandmother!) who as-much-as brushed Nash is often baffling and sag the book with un-needed detours.
Another high point of the book is that it offers the reader a delicious sideways ingress into the world of academia and its mores. With research and educational institutions erected in post-war America to facilitate advancement in defence and nuclear armament, and Nash having the opportunity and talent to spearhead some of the panels feeding directly or tortuously into these initiatives, the politics and atmosphere amongst the intelligentsia is revealing. Equally instructive is the bookmarking of various intellectual fences being scaled to newer pastures of no-return: the instatement of rigour and mathematics into the discipline of economics, the repercussions of which we are all privy to in this information age; the newer layers of axioms in disciplines of mathematics; the management of schizophrenia both pre-and post-use of anti-psychotic drugs (insulin-shock therapy!) and finally, the workings of the clandestine Nobel Prize committee. It's testament to Nasar's research that the book manages to inform on all these milieus are as alive as the chief mortal.
My one issue with the book is that while it's filled-to-gills with a reconstruction of John-Nash-the-person-perceived-by-others, his work in mathematics gets an unimpressive treatment. The embedding theorem, the Nash equilibrium, singularity theory and differential equations: they are all described in a cryptic and presumptively high-handed manner, thrown at the unsuspecting reader with no simplification. This could have better dealt with by a paragraph or two of context setting in accessible language of the parent fields to inflame some curiosity among the non-mathematically inclined readers. Nasar does attempt something to this effect half-heartedly when explaining the Game Theory but that's it. Nash's work, other than his mental illness, have been the key qualification for this biography, and watching this aspect not as carefully dealt as his other facets of life stop this from being a perfect biographical account. Still, it's a comprehensive, layered and balanced account of a living genius who continues to work and contribute to the world. Well worth a read.
cmah's review against another edition
3.0
Giving this book 3 stars because it’s probably good/interesting to the right audience. That is not me. I read this because I’m interested in the schizophrenic aspect, but this book was about theoretical math. Nash develops schizophrenia around age 30, which didn’t happen until page 240 something. This book was very dense, difficult to slog through, and relatively uninteresting. And Nash was made out to be such a dick pre-illness that I honestly stopped caring about him.
fkshg8465's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
informative
sad
slow-paced
5.0
A sad examination of a highly flawed man with a brilliant mind and a difficult life due to his illness (at least I think it’s fair to say a lot of it was due to illness). I remember watching the movie many years ago and being moved. The book filled in a lot of gaps in details for me. Story was well told. And it gave me insight into schizophrenia in a way I had not previously understood.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Ableism, Bullying, Confinement, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Homophobia, Infidelity, Mental illness, Toxic relationship, Police brutality, Medical content, Grief, Death of parent, Outing, Toxic friendship, Abandonment, and War
tiernanhunter's review against another edition
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0