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Book Review of A Beautiful Mind: The Life of Mathematical Genius and Nobel Laureate John Nash

A Beautiful Mind: The Life of Mathematical Genius and Nobel Laureate John Nash
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I liked the movie and I like reading biographies, so this should have been a really good book for me. Unfortunately, I felt the need for a higher math education than I have to understand the first third of the book. Most of what's left is a detailed, play-by-play account of Nash's madness. The movie was very accessable, but the book is much more cerebral. The author used letters, diaries, and interviews to put together the facts, which are presented in a somewhat choppy method that does not draw one into the telling.

That said, I did read the entire book (minus the difficult parts that I skimmed) and did find his overall life interesting. I do not recommend this book to the casual reader.