Recommended Reading

These are some of books I've recently found to be worthwhile. In my experience, the best way to obtain such publications "on the cheap" is in the form of used books purchased on the internet, e.g. from amazon.com.

• A Beautiful Mind: The Life of Mathematical Genius and Nobel Laureate John Nash by Sylvia Nasar
  • This is a well-written narrative of Nobel Laureate John Nash's life and work. The book was the basis of a later movie, which unfortunately takes appreciable creative license. I strongly recommend the book, but only mildly recommend the movie.

• Albert Einstein: A Biography by Albrecht Fölsing
  • In my opinion, this is the most definitive "readable" biography of Albert Einstein in the sense not only of its completeness, but also of its more forthright portrayal of some of Einstein's personal relationships. Summary: long, but worth it.

• Back to the Banat by Victor Wendl
  • Disclaimer: I'm admittedly biased because the author is my cousin. However, I think you'll find "Back to the Banat" to be a fascinating story. It's an historically-based novel set against the WWII backdrop of the eastern european region called the Banat (approximately present-day Romania, Serbia, and Hungary). This book stems from Victor's interest in our family's history and origin from the Banat.

• Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software by Sam Williams
  • This is the story of how Richard Stallman started the GNU Project and the free (open-source) software paradigm in general. Stallman, a rather controversial figure, has been recognized with some of most prestigious awards, including election to the National Academy and a MacArthur Fellowship. As someone who completely abandoned the proprietary Microsoft® environment in favor of Unix/Linux, I found this to be a most interesting story. The book can also be read (freely) online here.

• Hughes: The Private Diaries, Memos and Letters by Richard Hack
  • There has, of course, been an enormous collection of material published on Howard Hughes. Hack's book purports to be the ``definitive biography''. This may be a valid claim in the sense that the author had access to lots of recently un-sealed legal briefs and de-classified FBI and CIA documents. It's a little bit light on his accomplishments in aviation, but more thorough on his film-related activities and the many famous women he was involved with. I would have especially liked to see more material about Hughes' involvement with the Glomar Explorer expedition to secretly salvage a Soviet ballistic missile submarine. Hack's writing style makes the story flow well.

• In Code: A Mathematical Journey by Sarah Flannery
  • This book is both an autobiography and an account of the author's work in inventing the Cayley-Purser encryption algorithm. Amazingly, the author accomplished this a high-school student. Well written with lots of good supporting mathematical examples and puzzles.

• The Cathedral & the Bazaar by Eric Raymond
  • This now-classic book thoughtfully discusses the paradigms of software development, especially the open-source approach, without a great deal of computer science technical jargon. You might guess that this book would only be of interest to folks interested in computers, but the broader socio-economic contexts, especially cooperative work, really bring this to the mainstream.

• The Common Thread: A Story of Science, Politics, Ethics and the Human Genome by John Sulston and Georgina Ferry
  • This is the personal account of John Sulston's scientific work and career, including the Human Genome Project - a pleasant read.

• The Honors Class: Hilbert's Problems and Their Solvers by Ben Yandell
  • A well-written and thorough book that describes the history, status, and people who have attempted to solve each of David Hilbert's 23 famous mathematical problems he proposed at the 1900 International Congress of Mathematicians. Highly recommended!

• The Subjectivity of Scientists and the Bayesian Approach by S. J. Press and J. M. Tanur
  • I would categorize this book as a "must-read" for any researcher. It discusses the role of subjectivity in research and the Bayesian approach in modern work.

• Tuxedo Park: A Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science That Changed the Course of World War II by Jennet Conant
  • This is a fascinating historical account of the work of Alfred Loomis, who dropped out of the business world in the 1930's and used his wealth to finance a private laboratory which made contributions to radar and atom bomb research. Loomis, who was eventually elected to the National Academy, did not give interviews and destroyed his personal papers before his death. The author relied on her personal ties to Loomis' family and documentation from her grandfather, Harvard president James Bryant Conant (one of Loomis' staff scientists) for information in writing the book.

• Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud by Robert L. Park
  • This is an interesting book that not only hits upon various areas of junk science and pseudoscience, but draws attention to other things such as journalistic sensationalism and sloppiness. Very accessible: reader does not need to know any special science or math.