What do You think about A Beautiful Mind (2002)?
More reviews at The Story Within The StoryAt first glance, a biography of a mathematician would seem to make for a read dryer than the Sahara. However, John Nash is no ordinary mathematician and Sylvia Nasar is no ordinary biographer. In her capable hands, the life of John Nash comes to life…in all of its brilliant, dark, pessimistic, extraordinary, callous wonder. John Forbes Nash, Jr. is a mathematical genius whose extraordinary mind developed the structure for what became known as Game Theory – revolutionizing both mathematics and economics in the second half of the twentieth century. The power of his theories culminated with him being awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics nearly fifty years after his groundbreaking work began. But it came at a heavy price. By the age of thirty, Nash was suffering from his first bouts of paranoid schizophrenia, a disease he would suffer with for three decades. He was institutionalized by his family on several occasions and left for dead by most of the mathematics community. Left to wander the campus of Princeton University as a “ghost” and a “crazy man,” Nash did the unthinkable – he began recovering from a disease that there was thought to be no recovery from. He even begin to work on mathematics research again. It was a recovery that physiatrists thought was impossible. “I've made the most important discovery of my life. It's only in the mysterious equation of love that any logic or reasons can be found.”A Beautiful Mind is really not about mathematics, but about what it means to be labeled “gifted,” “different” or “sick.” It is about how society treats people who are unusual and how few answers there are for what goes on between someone’s ears. It is also about John’s wife Alicia, who set aside her own desires to try to guide John through a world that had become hostile to him.Ultimately, Sylvia Nasar succeeds with A Beautiful Mind because she leaves out most of the heavy-handed mathematics and focuses on who John Nash is and what his life represents. Make no mistake, John Nash not a lovable person. He is rude, thoughtless, self-centered and egotistical – all the things we don’t like in a person. His genius is both a gift and a curse. Yet, we cheer for him the whole way because there is an innocence about him; a childlike quality of someone who doesn’t quite understand other people but has to function within society none-the-less. And it is a society of the 1950s and 1960s with little understanding or tolerance for mental illness. His story also gives us hope that no matter how hopeless a person’s situation may seem, here is an example of someone who was able to climb out of that hole and rejoin life and be happy again. That is what makes John Nash’s story so important – A Beautiful Mind demonstrates that anyone’s life can be turned around. It demonstrates hope. It demonstrates redemption. It is a story well worth your time.
—Chad Sayban
This biography was the basis for the popular film "A Beautiful Mind" a few years ago. It's the fascinating story of an arrogant young mathematician who began his career with genius-level work in mathetmatics, succumbed to paranoid schizophrenia in his thirties, and ultimately experienced a remission in the late 80s and was awarded the Nobel Prize for his early work in game theory.Reading about Nash's early life and the beginning of his career, I couldn't help but notice that he was always rather an odd duck, even before he became delusional and was diagnosed as schizophrenic. I'm inclined to think that if he were a child now, it's fairly likely he would be diagnosed as having Asperger's or something similar, but that's just my uneducated opinion. His way of relating to the world was always sufficiently different that it took a long time for many of his colleagues to realize that his eccentricities had morphed into delusions. He was a genius, he was expected to behave oddly, and in some ways this both served as a measure of protection for him, and also may have prevented him from getting help earlier.I have to admit that I actually really disliked John Nash for a lot of the book. Even when he was sane, he was arrogant, self-absorbed, and unkind. He must have had some good qualities, though, other than his genius, because what really saved him in the end was the willingness of his friends and family to stand by him and try to help him. Again and again during his illness, his colleagues arranged work for him, smoothed over scandals caused by his odd behavior, and assisted his wife and mother in providing him with care. At times, his friends were almost too caring -- not having the same intimate contact with Nash that his wife Alice did, many of them believed he was not as ill as he actually was, and were very upset when he was involuntarily committed. The many points of view Nasar provides really bring home what it's like when someone succumbs to mental illness, and the way it affects just about everyone the person comes into contact with, like ripples in a pond.Nash's return to normality after years of delusional behavior is still something of a mystery to neuroscientists. This is not something that often happens in schizophrenic patients, which led some to posit that Nash may not have been schizophrenic, after all. Yet his behavior and experiences are much more consistent with schizophrenia than with any of the other illnesses, like biopolar disorder, that have been suggested. This leads to the conclusion that Nash is one of the lucky few who experience a near-complete remission after years of illness. I'd definitely recommend this biography to anyone with an interest in mathematics, mental illness, or who just likes a well-written biography.
—Kirsten
This is one of those books where writing a review was so daunting that I didn't get to it right away . . . and so never got to it at all.But even though it has now been almost 3 years since I read it, I will try to come up with something. Because I see several friends who had it as "to-read" 3 years ago still have not read it, and they should!I enjoyed the movie that is loosely based on this book. But it takes a lot of liberties with the facts -- skipping Nash's early life altogether, ignoring/omitting his other son and other relationships, ignoring the fact that he and his wife were in fact divorced for many years. It also gets game theory really, really wrong. And the schizophrenic spy stuff came from the minds of the filmmakers. The movie took the real life of John Nash, trimmed off many of the unsightly bits, polished it up and added some color. Makes for a very good movie, but not an accurate biography.Sylvia Nassar gives us the real John Nash, in all his too-human glory, warts and all. She also gives a nice look at game theory which is very readable to the layperson. Her research and interviews were clearly exhaustive, and her presentation of Nash's life is well-written and multi-layered.If there is ever some reason for my biography to be written, I want Sylvia Nassar to do it.
—rivka
