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An essential reading !
Good Collection of Nash Writings!
excellent
A Most Welcome Mathematical Banquet
An excellent compilation

The Essential John Nash
John Nash
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Similar Items:

A Beautiful Mind: The Life of Mathematical Genius and Nobel Laureate John Nash
Game Theory: A Nontechnical Introduction
A Beautiful Math: John Nash, Game Theory, And the Modern Quest for a Code of Nature
The Compleat Strategyst: Being a Primer on the Theory of Games of Strategy
Prisoner's Dilemma

ASIN: 0691095272

Book Description

When John Nash won the Nobel prize in economics in 1994, many people were surprised to learn that he was alive and well. Since then, Sylvia Nasar's celebrated biography A Beautiful Mind, the basis of a new major motion picture, has revealed the man. The Essential John Nash reveals his work--in his own words. This book presents, for the first time, the full range of Nash's diverse contributions not only to game theory, for which he received the Nobel, but to pure mathematics--from Riemannian geometry and partial differential equations--in which he commands even greater acclaim among academics. Included are nine of Nash's most influential papers, most of them written over the decade beginning in 1949.

From 1959 until his astonishing remission three decades later, the man behind the concepts "Nash equilibrium" and "Nash bargaining"--concepts that today pervade not only economics but nuclear strategy and contract talks in major league sports--had lived in the shadow of a condition diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenia. In the introduction to this book, Nasar recounts how Nash had, by the age of thirty, gone from being a wunderkind at Princeton and a rising mathematical star at MIT to the depths of mental illness.

In his preface, Harold Kuhn offers personal insights on his longtime friend and colleague; and in introductions to several of Nash's papers, he provides scholarly context. In an afterword, Nash describes his current work, and he discusses an error in one of his papers. A photo essay chronicles Nash's career from his student days in Princeton to the present. Also included are Nash's Nobel citation and autobiography.

The Essential John Nash makes it plain why one of Nash's colleagues termed his style of intellectual inquiry as "like lightning striking." All those inspired by Nash's dazzling ideas will welcome this unprecedented opportunity to trace these ideas back to the exceptional mind they came from.

Customer Reviews:

An essential reading !.......2007-01-06

In case you have been captivated by "A beautiful mind", and be disposed to know more about the controversial existence of John Nash, pick up this book, that surely will catch your entire attention.

Good Collection of Nash Writings!.......2004-06-26

I only rate books that I really enjoy reading. While this one has some techy chapters, readers without a strong math background can still enjoy it.

Professor Nash's story was brought to life by the movie, this book shows why. One day his manifold theory will rule! ;)

excellent.......2003-10-12

Personally, I found this book to be very interestring. The proofs and ideas are presented in clear and non-rigomorphic fashion. One is able to read the works of Nash in the way he himself presented them, and hopefully appropriate some mental strategies used by this genius. There is much that goes on behind the scene of creation of proofs. I think mathematicians of today would greatly benefit from availability of larger number of books which would contain the mathematical works in the way they were originally presented. This is certainly a major step in that direction.

A Most Welcome Mathematical Banquet.......2003-08-06

I can't begin to express how deeply satisfying it was to peruse these papers by John Nash. You almost felt you were right there at his side, as he penned them.

There is even something in the book for non-mathematical types: Sylvia Nasar's Introduction and the autobiographical essay (Chapter Two). But for me the greatest interest resided in the remaining chapters: 4-11.

Of these, I particularly enjoyed reading the original presentation of Nash's Thesis on 'Non-Cooperative Games' (Chapter 6), and was fascinated not only with the air-tight logic of his proofs, but the use of hand written-in symbols.

Of course, Chapter 7 is just the re-hashing of Ch. 6, but in proper type-set form, rather than Nash's original script. But - give me the former any day! Reading the original form and format almost made me feel like Nash's Thesis aupervisor, including the same excitement of a new discovery!

Chapter 8 'Two person Cooperative Games' nicely extends the mathematical basis to cover this species of interaction.(And in many ways, people will find the cooperative game model easier to understand than the non-cooperative).

Chapter 9 is important because it delves into the issue of parallel control, and logical functions such as used in high speed digital computers. This chapter was of much interest to me since particular aspects of parallel control figured in my own model of consciousness - recently presented in Chapter Five of my book, 'The Atheist's Handbook to Modern Materialism'. Astute readers who read both books will quickly see the analog between the Schematic of Logical Unit Function (p. 122) and my own Figure 5-13 ('Development of Neural Assemblies', p. 156).

I enjoyed Chapter 10, 'Real Algebraic Manifolds' because of my ongoing interest in Algebraic Topology, and especially homology and homotopy theory. In his chapter, Nash presents a cornucopia of methods for representation, which I am still playing with for different manifolds.

Chapter 11, 'The Imbedding Problem for Riemannian Manifolds', is a delight for anyone familiar with Einstein's General Relativity, or even differential geometry. When you read through this chapter, you also will understand why Nash is still very interested (and involved) in research to do with general relativity and cosmology. Particularly fun for me was his section on 'Smoothing of Tensors' (p. 163) and 'Derivative Size Concept for Tensors' (p. 164).

Chapter 12, 'Continuity of Solutions of Parabolic and Elliptic Equations' is like 'dessert' for anyone who is intensely interested (as I am) in modular functions, which themselves are related intimately to elliptic equations.

In short, I think this book has something for both mathematicians and non-math types alike. Obviously, the former are likely to get more out of it, so the question the latter group must ask is whether the purchase is worth satiating their curiosity about Nash.

I know how I would answer, even if I couldn't tell a derivative from a differential. However, this book can be read on all kinds of levels, and that's the beauty of it.

An excellent compilation.......2002-09-30

Having written about the life of the mathematician John Nash in the excellent biography "A Beautiful Mind", Sylvia Nasar teams up with the mathematician Harold W. Kuhn to produce a book that introduces the mathematical contributions of Nash, something that was done only from a "popular" point of view in Nasar's biography. For those who have the background, this book is a fine overview of just what won Nash acclaim in the mathematical community, and won him a Nobel Prize in economics.

It is always easy to dismiss ideas as trivial after they have been discovered and have been put into print. This is apparently what John von Neumann did after discussing with Nash his ideas on noncooperative games, dismissing his ideas as a mere "fixed point theorem". At the time of course, the only game-theoretic ideas that had any influence were those of von Neumann and his collaborator, the Princeton economist Oskar Morgenstern. The rejection of ideas by those whose who hold different ones is not uncommon in science and mathematics, and, from von Neumann's point of view at the time, he did not have the advantage that we do of examining the impact that Nash's ideas would have on economics and many other fields of endeavor. Therefore, von Neumann was somewhat justified, although not by a large measure, in dismissing what Nash was proposing. Nash's thesis was relatively short compared to the size on the average of Phd theses, but it has been applied to many areas, a lot of these listed in this book, and others that are not, such as QoS provisioning in telecommunication and packet networks. The thesis is very readable, and employs a few ideas from algebraic topology, such as the Brouwer fixed point theorem.

The paper on real algebraic manifolds though is more formidable, and will require a solid background in differential geometry and algebraic geometry. However, from a modern point of view the paper is very readable, and is far from the sheaf and scheme-theoretic points of view that now dominate algebraic geometry. It is interesting that Nash was able to prove what he did with the concepts he used. The result could be characterized loosely as a representation theory employing algebraic analytic functions. These functions are defined on a closed analytic manifold and serve as well-behaved imbedding functions for the manifold, which is itself analytic and closed. These manifolds have been called 'Nash manifolds' in the literature, and have been studied extensively by a number of mathematicians.

I first heard about John Nash by taking a course in algebraic topology and characteristic classes in graduate school. The instructor was discussing the imbedding problem for Riemannian manifolds, and mentioned that Nash was responsible for one of the major results in this area. His contribution is included in this book, and is the longest chapter therein. Here again, the language and flow of Nash's proof is very understandable. This is another example of the difference in the way mathematicians wrote back then versus the way they do now. Nash and other mathematicians of his time were more 'wordy' in their presentations, and this makes the reading of their works much more palatable. This is to be contrasted with the concisness and economy of thought expressed in modern papers on mathematics. These papers frequently employ a considerable amount of technical machinery, and thus the underlying conceptual foundations are masked. Nash explains what he is going to do before he does it, and this serves to motivate the constructions that he employs. His presentation is so good that one can read it and not have to ask anyone for assistance in the understanding of it. This is the way all mathematical papers should be written, so as to alleviate any dependence on an 'oral tradition' in mathematical developments.

Nash's proof illuminates nicely just what happens to the derivatives of a function when the smoothing operation is applied. The smoothing operator consists of essentially of extending a function to Euclidean n-space, applying a convolution operator to the extended function, and then restricting the result to the given manifold. Nash gives an intuitive picture of this smoothing operator as a frequency filter, passing without attenuation all frequencies below a certain parameter, omitting all frequencies above twice this parameter, and acting as a variable attenuator between these two, resulting in infinitely smooth function of frequency.

The next stage of the proof of the imbedding theorem is more tedious, and consists of using the smoothing operator and what Nash calls 'feed-back' to construct a 'perturbation device' in order to study the rate of change of the metric induced by the imbedding. Nash's description of the perturbation process is excellent, again for its clarity in motivating what he is going to do. The feed-back mechanism allows him to get a handle of the error term in the infinitesimal perturbation, isolating the smoother parts first, and handling the more difficult parts later. Nash reduces the perturbation process to a collection of integral equations, and then proves the existence of solutions to these equations. A covariant symmetric tensor results from these endeavors, which is CK-smooth for k greater than or equal to 3, and which represents the change in the metric induced by the imbedding of the manifold. The imbedding problem is then solved for compact manifolds by proving that only infinitesimal changes in the metric are needed. The non-compact case is treated by reducing it to the compact case. The price paid for this strategy is a weakening of the bound on the required dimension of the Eucliden imbedding space.

The last chapter concerns Nash's contribution to nonlinear partial differential equations. I did not read this chapter, so I will omit its review.

Sylvia Long's Mother Goose Nesting Blocks

Average customer rating:

Beautifully Illustrated Mother Goose Blocks
Great Baby Shower Gift
Great toy for toddlers and older kids too!
Best Baby Gift Idea We've Found
Loved the nesting blocks

Sylvia Long's Mother Goose Nesting Blocks
Sylvia Long
Manufacturer: Amazon Remainders Account
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Sylvia Long's Mother Goose (Mother Goose)
Sylvia Long's Mother Goose Block Books
Learning Block Books: Numbers, Colors, Shapes, Animals
Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star
Hush Little Baby: Board Book

ASIN: B0007WYFLQ

Customer Reviews:

Beautifully Illustrated Mother Goose Blocks.......2007-02-26

We purchased this collection of Mother Goose nesting blocks illustrated by Sylvia Long after we had already purchased the Mother Goose book of Nursery Rhymes. This means we already had the opportunity to see the detail and thoughtfulness of her illustrations up close.

There are ten blocks in all. Below is listed from largest to smallest block:

Number 10, No letter, Nursery Rhyme-"Peter, Peter Pumpkin Eater" with an illustration of such
Number 9, Letters Y & Z, Nursery Rhyme-"Humpty Dumpty" with illustration of such (I should note here that Sylvia Long doesn't show a living egg creature falling off a wall like we saw when we were kids, this is a depiction of an egg cracking and a chick coming out--this is what I meant above by "thoughtful illustration")
Number 8, Letters V, W, X, Nursery Rhyme-"Ring Around the Rosies"
Number 7, Letters S, T, U, Nursery Rhyme-"Hey Diddle Diddle"
Number 6, Letters P, Q, R, Nursery Rhyme-"Mary Had a Little Lamb"
Number 5, Letters M, N, O-Nursery Rhyme-"Hush A Bye Baby" (this depicts a mother bear lovingly patting a very safe baby bear in a crib, not flying through the air)
Number 4, Letters J, K, L-Nursery Rhyme-"Jack Be Nimble"
Number 3, Letters G, H, I-Nursery Rhyme-"Little Boy Blue"
Number 2, Letters D, E, F-Nursery Rhyme-Rain, Rain Go Away"
Number 1, Letters A, B, C-No clue on the nursery rhyme, I just realized I was missing this block! Please make sure you receive all 10 of the blocks.

The nesting blocks were purchased for our near 1-yr old daughter. Because of there paper based composition (albeit very durable it is still cardboard), I would not recommend them for a child still prone to sticking things in their mouth. As far as nesting (each block sets inside the other) and stacking for the sake of teaching, these blocks are wonderful! The letters and numbers are easy-to-read and large. The colors and illustrations are exactly as they appear in the book and they stack nicely in a box with a strap to reduce the ever growing clutter in our home.

As a side note, I also emailed Sylvia Long to see about getting a signed copy of her illustrated book, "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" for my daughter's first birthday. I started early anticipating a long delay in hearing back from her. She emailed within hours and was very pleasant to work with. This was an added bonus for sure!

Great Baby Shower Gift.......2007-01-22

I purchased this for a baby shower gift. Each block has a different Mother Goose nursery rhyme, a letter of the alphabet, a number and illustrations. With all the technology out there for kids, it's nice to know that building blocks are still in for kids. I still have my wooden building blocks when I was a child but nothing as beautiful as these.

Great toy for toddlers and older kids too!.......2006-09-06

When my son opened this toy at his first birthday party my eight year old son flipped out! I couldn't believe how excited he was (how "cool" he thought the blocks were). My toddler of course loved them too and still plays with them now that he's two. Since the older brothers thought it was a great toy, they enjoyed stacking them and knocking them down with their little brother. Even I don't mind stacking and nesting the blocks with my son...over and over and over. I plan on giving this as a baby gift or as a first birthday gift to friends and family in the future!

Best Baby Gift Idea We've Found.......2006-05-18

We give this now for all our baby gifts. It's great developmentally for such a wide range of ages -- babies can put one box inside another, toddlers can begin stacking them, older kids can put the alphabet or numbers in order. And unlike the wooden stacking blocks, it doesn't hurt when they fall down!

Loved the nesting blocks.......2005-08-03

The Mother Gooses Nesting blocks are beautifully done, and lots of fun for my 1 year old!

Los Angeles Times Sunday Crossword Puzzles, Volume 25 (LA Times)

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Los Angeles Times Sunday Crossword Puzzles, Volume 25 (LA Times)
Sylvia Bursztyn , and Barry Tunick
Manufacturer: Random House Puzzles & Games
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Spiral-bound

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Los Angeles Times Sunday Crossword Puzzles, Volume 24 (LA Times)
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Los Angeles Times Sunday Crossword Omnibus, Volume 5 (LA Times)
Los Angeles Times Sunday Crossword Omnibus, Vol. 1

ASIN: 0375721568
Release Date: 2006-07-11

Book Description

Sylvia Bursztyn and Barry Tunick have been collaborating on puzzle construction for 25 years. Each of these contemporary puzzles is filled with humor, wit, and plenty of puns. Casual solvers and serious puzzle addicts will find common ground here.
[Difficulty: Medium
Style: Contemporary]

Los Angeles Times Sunday Crossword Omnibus, Volume 4 (LA Times)

Average customer rating:

A Real Treat

Los Angeles Times Sunday Crossword Omnibus, Volume 4 (LA Times)
Sylvia Bursztyn , and Barry Tunick
Manufacturer: Random House Puzzles & Games
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Los Angeles Times Sunday Crossword Omnibus, Volume 5 (LA Times)
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Los Angeles Times Sunday Crossword Puzzles, Volume 24 (LA Times)
Los Angeles Times Sunday Crossword Puzzles, Volume 25 (LA Times)

ASIN: 0812935187
Release Date: 2003-10-14

Book Description

This latest super-saver collection of 200 Los Angeles Times Sunday crosswords is a steal for the puzzle devotee. Admirers of this popular series can once again enjoy the puns and fun that these crossword collections have to offer. With the first volume selling nearly 100,000 copies to date, this hefty tome is sure to be a big seller to its already-strong fan base!

Customer Reviews:

A Real Treat.......2001-08-23

A must-buy for those who want challenging, clever and sometimes witty crossword puzzles. I'd rate the degree of difficulty as being just below that of The Washington Post. Lots of Hollywood references make it a bit more fun for those who love old movies. I also appreciated the fact that every LA Times puzzle book I've worked to date contains actual words, not misspellings or created ones.

50 Of the Finest Adult Party Games (Party Games Books)

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Great collection of Party games

50 Of the Finest Adult Party Games (Party Games Books)

Manufacturer: Lagoon Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Party Games for Adults: Icebreakers, Parlor Games, and Party Tips That Will Make Your Guests Flip
Looky, Touchy, Feely Party Games
Games People Play

ASIN: 1902813065

Customer Reviews:

Great collection of Party games.......2000-11-28

I was throwing a party and I needed some ideas for icebreakers and fun games. I got this one and it's been the most helpful I've seen yet. It's got quiet, get to know you games like "kiss of death" to your more rowdy, wake the neighbors games like "the last straw". And it includes your in between games also. My personal favorite was "Cocktail conundrums". I highly recommend this book to anyone throwing a party or who just wants to have fun with friends.

Los Angeles Times Sunday Crossword Puzzles, Volume 24 (LA Times)

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Quintessential LA TIMES

Los Angeles Times Sunday Crossword Puzzles, Volume 24 (LA Times)

Manufacturer: Random House Puzzles & Games
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Spiral-bound

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Los Angeles Times Sunday Crossword Puzzles, Volume 23 (LA Times)
Los Angeles Times Sunday Crossword Puzzles, Volume 25 (LA Times)
Los Angeles Times Sunday Crossword Omnibus, Volume 5 (LA Times)
Los Angeles Times Sunday Crossword Omnibus, Vol. 1
Los Angeles Times Sunday Crossword Omnibus, Volume 2 (LA Times)

ASIN: 0812934237
Release Date: 2005-07-12

Book Description

Sylvia Bursztyn and Barry Tunick's delightfully punny Sunday crosswords are an institution. Los Angeles Times readers have relished them for more than 20 years; Random House Puzzles & Games solvers have snapped them up through more than 20 volumes. Thanks to Sylvia's freewheeling themes and grids and Barry's contemporary clues, this terrific team turns out the best-selling puzzle book series around, after The New York Times.

[PuzzleMeter: Difficulty—Medium;
Style—Very Contemporary]

Customer Reviews:

Quintessential LA TIMES.......2007-05-06

LA Times crossword puzzles are attractive for two reasons: they are more contemporary than most, and they are funny. So many crossword puzzles refer to TV shows, movies, and cultural events that happened 50 years ago. The Times is focused more on recent history. Not to say there's no depth to them -- there certainly is. You'll find plenty about Western history in the puzzles, as well as the occasional obscure word. On top of clues that are focused on the recent past there is the humor inherent in them and their corresponding answers. If you like puns -- or if you even like groaning at puns -- you'll enjoy these puzzles. You've got to approach these from a particular perspective -- one that's not too serious. It is, after all, a crossword puzzle and not brain surgery. But speaking of brain, studies are showing that we older folk (I mean older like 50) can keep our brains active and our memories sharp by doing things like crossword puzzles. These puzzles are recommended for a certain type of person -- the one who likes popular culture, and enjoys a certain kind of humor. If you've started forgetting why you came into a room, you'll like them all the more.

Los Angeles Times Sunday Crossword Omnibus, Volume 5 (LA Times)

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Los Angeles Times Sunday Crossword Omnibus, Volume 5 (LA Times)
Sylvia Bursztyn , and Barry Tunick
Manufacturer: Random House Puzzles & Games
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Los Angeles Times Sunday Crossword Omnibus, Vol. 1
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Los Angeles Times Sunday Crossword Puzzles, Volume 23 (LA Times)
Los Angeles Times Sunday Crossword Omnibus, Volume 2 (LA Times)

ASIN: 0812936833
Release Date: 2005-12-20

Book Description

This extra-value collection of 200 Los Angeles Times Sunday crosswords is a great bargain for anyone who loves fun-filled, pun-filled puzzles. With the first Los Angeles Times Omnibus selling nearly 100,000 copies to date, this hefty tome is sure to be a big seller to its already-strong fan base!

Los Angeles Times Sunday Crossword Puzzles, Volume 23 (LA Times)

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Los Angeles Times Sunday Crossword Puzzles, Volume 23 (LA Times)

Manufacturer: Random House Puzzles & Games
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Spiral-bound

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Los Angeles Times Sunday Crossword Puzzles, Volume 24 (LA Times)
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Boston Globe Sunday Crossword Puzzles, Volume 13 (Boston Globe)

ASIN: 0812934229
Release Date: 2004-07-13

Book Description

·50 contemporary, pun-filled Sunday-size puzzles
·A tradition of over 20 years of newspaper success
·A history of over 20 successful volumes

Average customer rating:

Loved it!
Passion for the Game
Loved It! Can't wait for the next book.
Exciting historical romantic suspense
Interesting story sunk under too much sex

Passion for the Game
Sylvia Day
Manufacturer: Brava
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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The Stranger I Married
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ASIN: 0758217595

Customer Reviews:

Loved it!.......2007-06-27

Sylvia Day just keeps getting better and better. From the first page of "Passion For The Game" to the last I was enthralled and read it in nearly one sitting. The love between Maria and Christopher was convincing and their chemistry was scorching.

Yes, this is an erotic romance, however, not along the clinical lines. The love scenes were highly sensuous and graphic but beautifully written, not at all gratuitous, imho. I have read my fair share of erotica and have found very few authors that can combine hot sex with an emotional romance. Sylvia Day is one of the few.

There was plenty of sexual tension, angst, hero-jealousy, and a really well drawn cast of characters that have stuck with me long after I closed the last page.

I cannot wait for Colin and Amelia's book.

Passion for the Game .......2007-06-27

Maria, Lady Winter, lives a life subject to her stepfather, Lord Welton's, whims. She has been forced to endure things that would have broken a lesser woman, but Maria will do anything he asks to ensure the safety of her sister, whom Welton holds hostage. The latest scheme Welton has hatched involves finding information about a notorious criminal, Christopher St. John, for blackmail. However, this last "mission" Lord Welton has charged her with might cost her more than she is prepared to give.

The agents of the crown have finally trapped Christopher St. John, but St. John will be granted a pardon in exchange for helping to apprehend another criminal. However, when St. John learns his target is the infamous Lady Winter the rules of the game change. Now, he needs to investigate Lady Winter, her propensity for widowhood, and turn all evidence over to the crown. He never expected that involvement with Lady Winter would change his life, but will both of them survive?

This is not your mother's regency romance! Passion For The Game is an edgy novel full of plot twists and raw sensuality. This book is not your average romance; the characters are infuriating at times and the plots and counter-plots will keep you busy trying to anticipate how Ms. Day will get the characters their happy ending. Sylvia Day crafts an action packed adventure where her characters are flawed and harsh making them seem as real as your next-door neighbor. The eroticism of the sex scenes in this book is both raw and compelling, and they will leave you breathless. Passion For The Game is a great read for the beach; so don't forget to pick it up next time you go shopping.

Sabella
Reviewed for Joyfully Reviewed

Loved It! Can't wait for the next book........2007-06-21

Christopher St. John and Marie are great characters. I loved following their story. Great plot, nice mix of romance, and sensuality makes this a great book. I only wished Marcus and Elizabeth could of been mentioned.

Exciting historical romantic suspense.......2007-06-11

Her stepfather uses her sister to blackmail Lady Maria Winter to abet his schemes. He has no concern re the impact his machinations have on her only that she obey or else never see her sibling again. However and in spite of her own scandals as an alleged widow-maker with two spouses suspiciously dead, Maria uses her keen intelligence to stay one step ahead of this rat until she figures out where he stashed her sister.

Her odious relative demands Maria use her body to seduce pirate Christopher St. John. However, she is attracted to the rogue who she must prove is a traitor or at least a dupe. Christopher has just gotten freed from prison with the stipulation that he seduce the "Wintry Widow" in order to learn her secrets and more so that of her stepfather. However, he is attracted to his target making him wonder if he has fallen into her sensual trap.

This historical romantic suspense grips the audience from the opening moment when readers meet the Wintry Widow and never slows down until the final confrontation. Maria and Christopher are terrific protagonists as they struggle between blackmailing demands and love. Sylvia Day writes a superb tale that will have her fans wondering throughout what the lead couple will choose.

Harriet Klausner

Interesting story sunk under too much sex.......2007-06-08

Sylvia Day's "Passion For The Game" is historical romance of the more earthy kind - there are more sex scenes in this story than anything else and, for this reader at least, it was a disappointment. The underlying plot and story of this book had potential: two very singular people, a smuggler pirate who is on his way to the gallows and a society Widow who is generally suspected of killing her two husbands, clash as they both try to use each other for their own ends. Both Christopher St John and Maria, Lady Winter, are interesting and lively characters whose strength of nature has been forged through their difficult histories.

Christopher St John has been released from Newgate so that he can get evidence against Lady Winter for the deaths of her two husbands who were actually agents of the crown. Lady Winter has been blackmailed by her murderous stepfather Viscount Welton to spy on Christopher St John. These two people therefore meet under the circumstances where they cannot trust each other as their lives, or those they love, are at stake. But as they spend more time in each others' company (usually horizontally in this book!) they begin to unravel the different layers of each others' personalities and find something rather more important together. There is also a subplot of Amelia, Maria's sister, and her blossoming into womanhood whilst under house arrest by her father - she is used as a bargaining chip to make Maria do Viscount Welton's bidding.

The plot is fairly good in this story but the disappointment for me was the ubiquitous sex scenes. One or two would have been enough to give us an idea that Christopher and Maria are compatible in bed but it seemed that they were leaping under the sheets at every possible opportunity and we had to have detailed all that they did there. Although this book is meant to be a romance it fell rather short on the romance and was far more of a sex manual and one which used rather coarse language as well, even between the hero and heroine. I was also not always entirely sure of the historical setting in many cases and some of the phraseology was American rather than 18th century English. There were some interesting characters such as Quinn, Amelia and Colin (who I imagine are the subject of a forthcoming book) but more could have been made of the hero and heroine in this story outside the bedroom. The book was a reasonable read but also a missed opportunity overlaid with too much sex.

[...]

Average customer rating:

Good, but sometimes to in-depth
A Beautiful Book
schizophrenia
Get your facts straight....
Detailed account of John Nash

A Beautiful Mind
Sylvia Nasar
Manufacturer: Faber and Faber
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Similar Items:

A Beautiful Mind (Widescreen Awards Edition)
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Game Theory: A Nontechnical Introduction

ASIN: 0571212921

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Stories of famously eccentric Princetonians abound--such as that of chemist Hubert Alyea, the model for The Absent-Minded Professor, or Ralph Nader, said to have had his own key to the library as an undergraduate. Or the "Phantom of Fine Hall," a figure many students had seen shuffling around the corridors of the math and physics building wearing purple sneakers and writing numerology treatises on the blackboards. The Phantom was John Nash, one of the most brilliant mathematicians of his generation, who had spiraled into schizophrenia in the 1950s. His most important work had been in game theory, which by the 1980s was underpinning a large part of economics. When the Nobel Prize committee began debating a prize for game theory, Nash's name inevitably came up--only to be dismissed, since the prize clearly could not go to a madman. But in 1994 Nash, in remission from schizophrenia, shared the Nobel Prize in economics for work done some 45 years previously.

Economist and journalist Sylvia Nasar has written a biography of Nash that looks at all sides of his life. She gives an intelligent, understandable exposition of his mathematical ideas and a picture of schizophrenia that is evocative but decidedly unromantic. Her story of the machinations behind Nash's Nobel is fascinating and one of very few such accounts available in print (the CIA could learn a thing or two from the Nobel committees). This highly recommended book is indeed "a story about the mystery of the human mind, in three acts: genius, madness, reawakening." --Mary Ellen Curtin

Book Description

In this dramatic and moving biography, Sylvia Nasar re-creates the life of a mathematical genius whose brilliant career was cut short by schizophrenia and who, after three decades of devastating mental illness, miraculously recovered and was honored with a Nobel Prize.

A Beautiful Mind traces the meteoric rise of John Forbes Nash, Jr., from his lonely childhood in West Virginia to his student years at Princeton, where he encountered Albert Einstein, John von Neumann, and a host of other mathematical luminaries. At twenty-one, the handsome, ambitious, eccentric graduate student invented what would become the most influential theory of rational human behavior in modern social science. Nash's contribution to game theory would ultimately revolutionize the field of economics.

As a young professor at MIT, still in his twenties, Nash dazzled the mathematical world by solving a series of deep problems deemed "impossible" by other mathematicians. As unconventional in his private life as in his mathematics, Nash fathered a child with a woman he did not marry. At the height of the McCarthy era, he was expelled as a security risk from the supersecret RAND Corporation -- the Cold War think tank where he was a consultant.

At thirty, Nash was poised to take his dreamed-of place in the pantheon of history's greatest mathematicians. His associates included the most renowned mathematicians and economists of the era: Norbert Wiener, John Milnor, Alexandre Grothendieck, Kenneth Arrow, Robert Solow, and Paul Samuelson. He married an exotic and beautiful MIT physics student, Alicia Larde. They had a son. Then Nash suffered a catastrophic mental breakdown.

Nasar details Nash's harrowing descent into insanity -- his bizarre delusions that he was the Prince of Peace; his resignation from MIT, flight to Europe, and attempt to renounce his American citizenship; his repeated hospitalizations, from the storied McLean, where he came to know the poet Robert Lowell, to the crowded wards of a state hospital; his "enforced interludes of rationality" during which he was able to return briefly to mathematical research. Nash and his wife were divorced in 1963, but Alicia Nash continued to care for him and for their mathematically gifted son, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia as a teenager. Saved from homelessness by his loyal ex-wife and protected by a handful of mathematical friends, Nash lived quietly in Princeton for many years, a dreamy, ghostlike figure who scrawled numerological messages on blackboards, all but forgotten by the outside world.

His early achievements, however, fired the imagination of a new generation of scholars. At age sixty-six, twin miracles -- a spontaneous remission of his illness and the sudden decision of the Nobel Prize committee to honor his contributions to game theory -- restored the world to him. Nasar recounts the bitter behind-the-scenes battle in Stockholm over whether to grant the ultimate honor in science to a man thought to be "mad." She describes Nash's current ambition to pursue new mathematical breakthroughs and his efforts to be a loving father to his adult sons.

Based on hundreds of interviews with Nash's family, friends, and colleagues and scores of letters and documents, A Beautiful Mind is a heartbreaking but inspiring story about the most remarkable mathematician of our time and his triumph over a tragic illness.

Customer Reviews:

Good, but sometimes to in-depth.......2007-06-29

Very good story, I could hardly put it down.

though at times Sylvia spent an entire chapter simply talking about a university, She struggled staying with her point, though only at times.

A Beautiful Book.......2007-06-15

In Nasar's biography of the Nobel prize winning mathematician John Forbes Nash, Jr., his descent into irrationality is portrayed by chronicling several experiences in his frenetic childhood and those from his early adulthood to the present.

In the first chapters of the book, Nasar juxtaposes several episodes in Nash's distinguished childhood, displaying his early genius in chemistry and math in conjunction with those that reveal a childishness equally as impressive. As a youngster, Nasar shows his penchant for pulling pranks on his friends, at one time electrocuting a neighbor and even his own sister, who was continually forced by her mother as they grew up to include the younger Nash in her social activities. However, Nash, though not taciturn, preferred reading encyclopedias and most of all, experimenting. His experiments with bomb-making actually killed one of his childhood friends, after which Nash stopped making them for the rest of his life.

The book describes Nash's early discovery of his love for math one day while reading a book about Fermat's Theorem on prime numbers, which he proved by his own self at the age of 12. It also details his spurning Harvard for Princeton University, a less recognized mathematics school then despite Albert Einstein's prominent position in the faculty, upon his graduation from Carnegie Mellon University, then known as the Carnegie Institute of Technology, because he felt they had not tried hard enough to pursue him.

Indeed, his egocentrism is depicted throughout the whole biography, and it is this megalomania which would later develop into full-blown schizophrenia and terrorize his whole constitution for decades, halting his academic production almost completely during that time period.

Nash ascribes his sudden affliction to a number of disappointments: first, though Nash had solved a problem on turbulence in which he was able to devise a mathematical model for notating its sudden changes in motion, he found out when he was about to submit his paper for publication that someone else, an Italian by the name of De Giorgi, had beat him to it and published his paper in the most obscure journal imaginable; secondly, he says in a letter that his attempt to revise quantum theory was "possibly overreaching and psychologically destabilizing."; third, he attributes his failure to win the Fields Medal in 1958--his last chance since it is generally awarded to young mathematicians--as a contributing factor to his disease. The rest of the book focuses on his delusional experiences and the assistance and loving care of his small group of friends, including his wife, which helped him finally regain control of his mind in 1990.

It was at Princeton that Nash became familiar with John von Neumann's famous theory on rational human behavior, The Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, which focused on zero-sum two person games, and which he felt was unrealistic for predicting most economic situations. Concentrating on what to him were gaping flaws in von Neumann's work, he set out to write his epochal dissertation on a theory that could encompass all realistic scenarios, called Non-cooperative Games, which contained the definition of his equilibrium theory, whose name he is now its eponym. His results also inspired the most famous game of strategy in all of social science: The Prisoner's Dilemma. More significantly, it was this work which won him his Nobel prize in Economics in 1994.

Nasar states that his hyper-competitive spirit was fueled by an intense drive to succeed. When he did not receive an assistant professorship offer from Princeton after obtaining his Ph.D at only 22 years of age, despite his seminal paper on algebraic manifolds, he was humiliated deeply and thereafter went to MIT where he was offered a fellowship. At 25, Nasar describes Nash's sudden impulse to solve the embedding problem for manifolds--a problem which had been left unsolved since it was suggested by Riemann--as a way to belittle a colleague at MIT. And he did. This is today one of the most famous works in pure mathematics.

The body of research which Nasar obviously has pored over is impressive, and it shows in the fluidity of his biography, which flows like a novel, and the immense number of sources cited. It is a fascinating book and one which I recommend as an insight into the emergence of a supposedly degenerative disease and its subsequent effects on a man who at the time seemed on the verge of unprecedented success and fame in the scholastic world. It also shows how even the most logical can at times seem most illogical, and vice versa. As Nash says, "the ideas I had about supernatural beings came to me the same way my mathematical ideas did." For me, I was less intrigued by the episodes detailing Nash's battles with schizophrenia than I was with those of his academic achievements. His spirit and motivation is something I wish I possessed much more of.

All in all, this is a book I enjoyed immensely. And for $2 at Deseret Industries, I couldn't have asked for a better way to spend my money!

schizophrenia.......2007-06-08

The book is excellent. Very detailed on the early years of John Nash as he entered graduate school, his struggle to live "normally" when the delusions so ruefully interrupted his life, and his strenght of character to try and win over his mental illness.

Get your facts straight...........2007-02-26

Whenever I read a book and find obvious errors that I know about, and I am not even an investigative journalist, I wonder what else is wrong about it. Ms. Nasar, it's Jacob Wirth Restaurant in Boston, not Jack Wirth and the law firm was Choate, Hall & Stewart, not Steward!

Detailed account of John Nash.......2006-11-14

A very well written acoount of Math genius Robert nash--from his beginnings to older age. Its surprising that this man went into deep mental problems and then seemed to come out again to function well. The movie is mentioned in this book as well--with the subject meeting actor Russel Crowe.

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