the unvarnished and unhollywood version

The book and the movie are two different works of art…I liked the movie very much when I saw it and was fascinated by John Nash’s life. However, reading the book has provided so much more detail, which it always does!

Although this is a book review, I must take a couple of issues with the movie…it tends to glamorize the life and trivialize some of the issues that occurred in Nash’s life that COULD have been included in the two hour running time. I won’t comment on that here.

What is fascinating about the book…it reads and flows extremely well for the technical material that is covered. I’m not a mathematician…however game theory is definitely very fascinating. Sylvia Nassar goes into detail in the book explaining how it works and it is effective in an economic sense.

Many details about Nash’s upbringing including his childhood, friends, and his family life are explored. The author seems to have done a very thorough job of researching out his life for this book by interviewing the entire cast of characters…family, wife, ex-lovers, colleagues etc. The book can be harsh at times but it is somewhat sympathetic to him.

You cannot really section out this book, but it does a wonderful job of the following:

PERSONAL
Nash, the person…we get to see what his childhood and upbringing was like…as well as the background of his own parents and his wife’s upbringing which illuminates many parts of his life.

PROFESSIONAL
We learn about his education, his honors, how he taught…as well as his demise due to his schizophrenia.

MEDICAL
Luckily, this part is not harrowing or overly frightening. Glucose therapy for the schizophrenics done over 40 years ago sounds well intentioned but definitely creepy. Medicines as well as our perceptions of mental health have definitely improved over the past half century…more so than we realize.

TECHNICAL
This part may be a bit dry to some readers…it can be skimmed over, but I really enjoyed reading these sections…it truly illuminated what is the beautiful mind inside of John Nash.