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Rating: 
Summary: One Beautiful Mind Deserves Another
Review: If you liked the movie, you will love this book. Sylvia Nasar's superb biography takes us well beyond the film version, which, in slightly more than two hours, could only do so much.Here you will experience the rich detail of Nash's life explored by a writer of consummate skill. Nasar's prose paints marvelous pictures of Nash, his family, his quandaries, academia, departments of mathematics here and abroad, and, of course, Princeton itself (I once lived nearby). Nash was indeed a tormented soul, trapped as he was by schizophrenia, aptly termed a "cancer of the mind." Unable to develop and maintain relationships with others -- not uncommonly characteristic of genius -- he turned inward and found himself lost in the labyrinths of a frightening inner sanctum. If names like Godel, von Neumann, and Norbert Weiner are already familiar to you, you will appreciate the way in which Nasar brings them (and Einstein) to life with colorful anecdotes drawn from the reminiscences of those who knew them. This is an excellent book -- one as others have written will teach you about many things. One beautiful mind found another when Sylvia Nasar chose to write about John Forbes Nash, Jr. I, for one, am grateful that she did.
Rating: 
Summary: Quite a journey....
Review: Initially, I was intimidated by the amount of mathematical theory and high-level concepts that this book presented alongside the life of John Nash, but how can a biography do a mathematical genius justice without it? For those who persevered through the heavily math-laden sections of the text, I think Nasar did a great job making it as accessible as possible for the average reader, like myself. The story of John Forbes Nash, Jr. is, without a doubt, an intriguing one. As I read along and discovered the difficulties and hurdles associated with schizophrenia I steadily began to wonder what it must feel like, first, to be a genius, second, to be a genius increasingly out of touch with what he loves most. Nash's life was one of isolation, first due to his incredible ability to think, and then because of his outrageous ideas and delusions. His odd little ways, along with his progressively more noticeable mental illness, took away many of the chances at greatness that Nash had always felt were just on the horizon.
The devotion of his wife, Alicia, was Dr. Nash's saving grace at times. Even though she had to separate from him to get a bit of perspective on life and just take a break, she never turned her back on him. Alicia was always willing to help his life and career whenever possible. It's quite astounding that Nash was able to endure so many years of hellish mental turmoil and come out on the other side to receive one of the greatest of all honors...the Nobel Prize. Throughout the book, I constantly found myself pulling for Nash and longing to give his naysayers a good slap. His mind and his genius are truly beautiful, and I believe Dr. Nash is one of America's greatest treasures. I feel enriched by this story and reminded that all things are possible with determination, support, and perhaps a little good luck thrown in for good measure. Even though the book is difficult at times, give it a go...I don't think you'll regret it.
Rating: 
Summary: Warning -- not your typical biography
Review: It's likely that this book will attract a lot of new curiosity, from those who read, see or hear about the movie version of Nash's life. The problem is that this book may end up being more -- and less -- than most readers are seeking. Nasar tries too hard to please both expected types of readers: math majors and those attracted to the human interest element of schizophrenia. Her attention to detail is exhausting. She not only recounts every theory ever attributed to Nash, but pushes extensive detail on us about what every theory means. Probably every quotation ever made about Nash and his theories, regardless of whether or not it serves a point, is reprinted here. We're given background details about every work and school acquaintance that came into Nash's life, even though most of this information is unnecessary and detracts greatly from the central story. And when she's ready to tell us about Nash's employment period with the Rand Corporation, we must first read an entire chapter about the history of Rand and its founders, as well as many more exploratory pages about game theories. It must be noted that A Beautiful Mind can usually be found in the Math section of bookstores. This is no coincidence. In order to learn about, and understand, Nash as a human being, you must trudge through numerous, exhaustingly detailed math principles, and other unnecessary padding by Nasar. Yes, there's a very good story here, but for general biography fans, be forewarned that it is buried within about 200 pages of information which the publisher should have seen fit to excise.
Rating:
Summary: A Beautiful Mind
Review: John Nash's story is truly inspirational. I could not stop the audio until I got to the end! John Nash, a mathematical genius, had many ups and downs in his life, including a diagnosed mental illness and various social problems that made his life painful and complicated. His Nobel-prize winning work occurred while he was writing his dissertation at Princeton. He was not recognized until later in his life for his ground-breaking contribution to "game theory". His story is one not only of his incredible gift, mental illness and remission, but really one of personal victory. In the end, he learns to live in harmony with those around him doing what he enjoyed most. One of my most recent favorites!
Rating:
Summary: CITOYEN DU MONDE or ZARATHUSTRA IN ANTARCTICA
Review: Sylvia Nasar's biography of John Nash, Jr., A BEAUTIFUL MIND, is an easier book to recommend than to read, strange as that may sound. It may be the first such work which I feel actually suffers from over-research. The names of obscure mathematicians, physicists, theorists, and sundry Princetonians crowd nearly each and every page, a torrent of pronouns raining down until one starts to get that lost-in-a-crowd feeling. Nasar would have done better (and trimmed the page count nicely) had she concentrated more intensely on the half-dozen or so really important people in Nash's life instead of taking us for this long escalator journey where so many dim ghosts are met only in passing.
Unlike many, I read the book, then saw the movie. Ron Howard's film is far more concerned with Nash's disease, paranoid schizophrenia, than with Nash. Huge blocks of Nash's life are, understandably, left out--his premarital affair resulting in a son he never cared for, his apparent bisexuality and often bizarre relationships with other men his age, a sure propensity for mental cruelty, and so on. Nasar's Nash, especially the younger man, is bloodless, cold, unfeeling. The more words Nasar employed to discover something human and constant in her man, the more I was convinced she would never find any.
Yet, there is something extraordinary at work here. Something that keeps you there for this long and often confusing and contradictory ride through the perils and boredom of high academia, genius, and madness. It's a common belief that genius and madness must always be close neighbors if not cohabitors. In his Nobel autobiography, John Nash observes: "Without his 'madness,' Zarathustra would necessarily have been only another of the millions or billions of human individuals who have lived and then been forgotten." Maybe that's it.
Rating:
Summary: Captivating Story of a Tortured Genius
Review: This biography of John Nash was the basis for the movie A Beautiful Mind (which is a wonderful film, go see it). Nash was awarded the Nobel prize in economics in 1994 for his contributions to game theory. He also suffered from schizophrenia. Of course as a psych major I am intrigued by the stigma associated with mental disorder that is prevalent in this book. Nash did most of his work in the 50s and 60s. We still don't know very much about mental disorders and people knew even less when Nash was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Although this book is occasionally dry with talk about specific mathematic equations and technical theories, you don't need to understand all that stuff to really enjoy the book. I loved it. I saw the movie first, which was definitely a good thing because the book and the movie are a lot different. Although the movie strays quite a bit from the actual facts and events of Nash's life, I think it still captures the essence of his experiences and portrays him as the "crazy" genius that he was.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting Read
Review: This book is not just for mathematicians or those in the field of hard sciences - but for anyone who wants to have some clarity on certain aspects of life itself. Sylvia Nasar manages to write about the life of John Forbes Nash, a mathematician, from his college years which began in 1948, to his years of maturity and ends the book in 1997. She tells a very important story that captures the organizational culture of math departments throughout colleges and universities across the country, homosexuality during the McCarthy era, mental illness and the recovery of mental illness, relationships and the importance of them, as well as mathematical theorems - how they developed and the use of them. This book sheds some light on why mathematicians set themselves apart from other disciplines. Her story does not only belong to Nash but to many other mathematicians whose story was similar. Read this book if you are interested in what contributes to scientist going "mad." It lends credence to the term the "zany professor." Also, if you really pay attention, you can figure out how mathematical equations apply to everyday life...and how many decisions in the political and economic arena are not made unless the situation is applied to a mathematical equation. We are introduced to the game theory and how Nash modified the theory by introducing equilibrium points. All games do not have to end up with a winner and a loser, especially if cooperation is introduced, according to Nash. The scientific jargon gets ever so boring as we read through several chapters on the military's dependence on academia in an effort to be competitive with Russia back in the 1950s and 1960's. The author introduces the reader to every mathematician Nash ever read about, worked with and admired. We are inundated with names and theorems that many readers will never encounter again unless a mathematician. Nasar is very wordy almost as though she has the inability to get to the point. The book is laced with trivial background information on people who were insignificant to the story Nasar is attempting to narrate. While the book is easy to put down, it is also easy to pick up again. Something keeps drawing you to Nasar's written pages. By the time I got to the end of the first full paragraph on page 362, I wept. I wept because Nash was questioning whether it was okay for him to eat in the faculty cafeteria at Princeton....a place where he had eaten many times as an established mathematician, a place where he learned, taught others, and oftentimes held court. I wept for Nash and others like him....for the turmoil that a mental illness takes one through and how people react to those who are mentally imbalanced. The most profound sentence in the whole book is on the front page in which Nasar quotes Nash, a mathematical genius, explaining why he thought aliens from outer space were giving him secret messages. Nash responds, "....the ideas I had about supernatural beings came to me the same way that my mathematical ideas did. So I took them seriously." Read this book if you have the time. No rush.
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