Review: CHAOS by James Gleick

I think books on math and physics are very interesting, especially the theoretical aspects. Unfortunately, I've never had any aptitude for those subjects, and I never learned to do the math necessary to really understand them. What this usually means is that I generally understand them until the equations come out, and then I get lost.

Gleick's books are different, in that he's not a mathematician or physicist either. What they may lack in precision -- which would be lost on me anyway -- they more than gain in readability. This book is particularly good in this regard, both because it's nearly 30 years old and because there are a great many illustrations of Mandelbrot sets, as well as many photographs and charts that make the text clearer.

Chaos may not have lived up to the rapturous expectations of the 1980s, but it has still proven to be an important concept, and this book does a good job of introducing it. I recommend it.