Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges, Douglas Hofstadter
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Book Reviews of Alan Turing: The Enigma
Book Review: interesting portrait of a compelling misfit
Summary: 4 Stars
The book is well titled as the real Alan Turing was an enigma to many of those who knew him and perhaps even to himself. It is another example of how genius moves to its own rhythms and manages to get noticed in spite of itself. Turing is, more than anyone else, the father of the modern computer, a man who could visualize something which did not even exist. It was his vision that eventually came to be the most powerful innovation in the last half century. Hodges book explores Turing's entire life and illuminates the context in which apparently arcane and irregular thinking came to have profound ramifications at the right moment and time.
Book Review: Good biography, perhaps too long.
Summary: 4 Stars
If you consider to read this book in order to know about Alan Turing's life, definetely this is the book. In it you will learn about the code breakers, about the WWII spy technology and also about the science aplied to War, however, when I read it I found out that sometimes too many pages (550) can make it boring (more than 20 pages dedicate about how to build a subroutine in a program, more than 20 pages about homosexuality laws, more than 20 pages about historic information from India). Being so detailed makes sometimes forget about the main issue. That is why I didn't give it 5 stars.Book Review: Excruciatingly Detailed
Summary: 2 Stars
This biography on Alan Turing would have been so much better if the author had just thrown out about half the excruciatingly detailed descriptions of every single thing that happened in young Turing's life.
The first 100 pages and he's not even out of college yet. Boring and a little bit pointless. I'd like to recommend the book, but I'm only about half-way through and find myself skipping entire pages - I mean, who really wants to read all those letters he wrote to home when he was at boarding school? It's a little like reading the shopping list of a famous person - no matter how interesting that person may have been, it's just not that interesting to read about the mundane details of his or her life.
For a really great biography on another enigmatic scientist, try "Tesla - Man Out of Time" by Margaret Cheney. Now, that's the way to write a biography.
Book Review: Too much detail for me
Summary: 2 Stars
I found the story of Alan Turing's life to be very interesting. His original work on dreaming up a "thinking machine" that would eventually become what we know as a computer and his work on breaking the German "enigma" code are worth knowing about. His tragic end is cause for us all to remember the importance of tolerance. However, I found this book to be too long and detailed for my tastes. I think the story could have been told in one half or one third the space. So I would recommend that anyone interested in the history of science read a biography of Turing, but a different one than this book.Book Review: Tedium
Summary: 1 Stars
With so many good reviews (5 stars), somebody doesn't know what makes a good book. Maybe its me, but I was so disappointed in this book. If you think this is going to be a great story about the wizards of bletchley park, keep shopping. Its not. Its page after page (600 +) of nails across the chalkboard tedium.