Customer Reviews
Complex Man-A Bio That Runs True - By: Douglas P. Murphy, 26 Oct 2008 
A while back I was glancing through one of my wife's magazines & found this article on John Nash. I read with interest & inexplicably began staring at one of the photos. "Oh, my God!" I recognized him. D floor. Firestone Library at Princeton University. For a while I had studied there rather steadily & spent a fair amount of time on D floor - coke machines & chatter. John Nash used to show up there fairly regularly & saw me as well. There was some gossip from the other D floor patrons about a professorin whose life something had gone wrong. Eventually Mr. Nash started to talk to me & started to show me books he was reading. I was fairly young & quite honestly became uncomfortable & uneasy for various reasons & did not promote future contacts although now I wish I had. Mr. Nash's life is fascinating to me, & I salute his achievements & recommend this book.
The Hubris of Genius - By: Captain Cook, 09 Jul 2004 
This biography of the Nobel Prize winner & schizophrenic mathematical genius John Forbes Nash surprisingly brings to mind the main characterin Dostoyevsky's great novel, "Crime & Punishment." Like the intense, reclusive student, Raskolnikov, Nashin this biography comes across as an extremely anti-social & arrogant young man, convinced that his genius gives him certain rights & freedoms beyond the petty restrictions, rules, & manners that govern normal human conduct.
But whereas Dostoyevsky's character commits a murder, Nash's main offense is merely to be an arrogant & 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. Asin the case of the notoriously absent-minded Albert Einstein -- whom Nash meetsin 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 & 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 meaningin the Universe sparked off his insanity as he started to discern complex codes implanted by extra-terrestrialsin the random occurrence of certain letters of the alphabetin 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 & arrogance, Nash gradually recovers & receives his apotheosisin the 1994 Nobel Prize for economics.
Movies & 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 & forays into the worlds of science & mathematics that the movie had no space for. So, if you saw the movie & loved it, this biography still has plenty to offer.
Thoughts on A Beautiful Mind - By: , 10 Feb 2004 I have not seen the film by Ron Howard & I must admit that I knew nothing of John Nash prior to reading this book. My main reason for reading A Beautiful Mind, was an interestin mental illnesses that impede with such catastrophic affect upon people's lives, an interest that stems from reading several books by Oliver Sacks. In this sense I misinterpreted the book's main objective.
Sylvia Nasar's aim has been to document Nash's life from his earliest childhood, & she does so with such a sense of time & place that the reader is immediately enthralled. It is not, as I had assumed before reading it, a book that sets out to expose a hidden truth of Schizophrenia or Mathematics. It is the story of a man whose character & ideas struggled to find a placein the world; a genius who was forced to live through the most debilitating of mental illnesses, to emerge to belated credit for his achievements. Although Mathematics is a central feature of the story, Nasar only touches on the substance of Nash's theories, focussing instead on their impact on the Mathematics & Economics communities, & his own mind. The same is true of Nasar's approach to Schizophrenia; there are no real medical descriptions of the illness, but her depictions of life for the schizophrenic & those around them, has a depth & clarity that goes beyond any medical diagnosis. The undertones of predisposition & of defining the borders between illness & health are carefully managed throughout the book & leave the reader, if not wiser, certainly more open-minded.
The volume of research, (easily assessed by a quick flick through the notes), Nasar investedin her book is truly impressive & the result is a biography that deserves the acclaim it has won. From the bizarre world of the Princeton Mathematics department, to life behind the guarded doors of the RAND institute, to struggles of family life & commitment to mental hospitals, the book is thorough, passionate, humorous & above all elegant.
Even if, like myself you have little or no knowledge of John Nash, A Beautiful Mind, will remain accessible, hugely enjoyable & enlightening, something for which you will want to free up some time.
A fascinating insight into the mind of a genius - By: , 09 Mar 2003 The size of this book may seem overpowering, but do not, as I did, think it will be too cumbersome to just sit & read. Nash's world of mathematicians grabbed me immediately as they were all such interesting characters. I was intrigued to read of names I'd heard like Einstein - & see how these geniuses fitted together. The author has researched endlessly about the mathematical theorists, & explains their theoriesin a layperson's terms. But the star of the book is of course, John Nash. He is not always likeable, but he is always fascinating. The title sums him up perfectly. His "beautiful mind" wasin his youth, above the rest of us, & he needed praise & stimulation. I was glad to learn more of the games theory which was coveredin the film, & feel I have learned something valuable from the explanations. Nash's breakdown is described without sentimentality so that the reader feels even more the subject, knowing his potential. Schizophrenia has become more undertandable for me now I have read about a real person, & I can feel the torment he must have felt trying to suppress the delusions. This is one of the best biographies I have ever read, & recommend it to anyone who likes to feel they have learned something from their reading.
A Beautiful Insight - By: Brian Sloan, 08 Jul 2002 Nasar provides an exhaustive account of the life of John F. Nash, Jr, who is perhaps one of the great geniuses of the past century, & could have been greater still if paranoid schizophrenia had not intervened.
What is so important about this work is that Nasar is equally skilledin communicating the extent of Nash's illness & the significance of his battle against it as she isin communicating the extent of his mathematical genius. She does not simply examine Nash, but also the effect that Nash had on those around him, whether positive or negative. Although it is blatantly obvious that Nash is a hero of Nasar's, she is certainly not afraid to criticise specific actions or attitudes of his when she feels that such criticism is justified. Perhaps the most potent examples of this occur when Nash's personal life is describedin a large amount of detail. This produces a tremendously balanced, no-holds-barred, biography.
The fact that this book shares its title with Ron Howard's latest film is misleading to some extent, since this book devles much deeper than a two-hour film ever could. So, even if you have seen the film, as I had, you will be shocked & captivated by new revelations about Nash, & come away with a much more complete picture of the man. The sheer volume of the footnotes at the end of the book is a testament both to its accuracy & the effort that Nasar investedin it.
