AnyBook4Less.com	Find the Best Price on the Web Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Home  |  Store List  |  FAQ  |  Contact Us  |
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money Keyword AuthorISBN

Title: Games of Life: Explorations in Ecology, Evolution and Behaviour (Penguin Science) by Karl Sigmund ISBN: 0-14-024209-0 Publisher: Penguin USA Pub. Date: 01 July, 1995 Format: Paperback List Price(USD): $11.95

Your Country USA Canada United Kingdom Australia Austria Belgium France Germany Italy Netherlands Switzerland Currency AutoUSD CAD GBP EUR AUD CHF Delivery Only cheapest delivery All delivery options Include Used Books Are you a club member of: Barnes and Noble Books A Million Chapters.Indigo.ca

Average Customer Rating: 4.6 (5 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: Amazing Combination
Comment: This book is an amazing combination of mathmatics, science, reason and wit. It is a great way for those of us who are not well-versed in biology or mathematics to learn a considerable amount of important knowledge. Sigmund manages the impossible in this very well-written book: to explain his rather complex subject thoroughly, but concisely, without becoming tedious or condescending.

I found it humbling that someone could be such a good natural writer (I believe English is not even his native tongue) and to have such mastery of a technical subject such as this. While this is not a casual read, it is consistently intriguing and thought-provoking.

I also find it rather amazing that this book is not a best-seller - at least as far as any book dealing with mathematics and biology can be. It's hard to believe there is anything else out there that attempts to bring scientific knowlege to the uninformed with such profound success.

However, I would say that the best thing about this book to me was that it showed the inherent logic of life. In this regard, the chapter on the "prisoner's dilemma" which combined psychology, mathematics, and biology was a real masterpiece.

Rating: 5
Summary: A fine and funny introduction
Comment: I'm sorry to see that this book is out of print at the time of this writing. I hope it gets republished.

For one thing, it's funny. Karl Sigmund is a mathematician, and he has a mathematician's sense of humor. (I mean that as a _good_ thing.)

For another, it's very informative. The topics of the chapters are widely scattered -- John Horton Conway's game of Life; predator-prey systems; the Prisoner's Dilemma and the evolution of cooperation -- but what they have in common is their relevance to evolutionary biology, ecology, and psychology. And I don't personally know of any other single volume that introduces _all_ of them to the lay reader -- let alone that does so as well and charmingly as Sigmund's book.

I originally set out to review it because I had just written a review of William Provine's _The Origins of Theoretical Population Genetics_. These two books work pretty well together: Provine gives a "diachronic" account of the historical development of the field (or at least one of its major subfields), and Sigmund gives a "synchronic" account of its present state (or nearly so; the book was written in 1993). Between the two of them, they ought to give the interested reader a pretty healthy sense of what's so intellectually captivating about this field.

Well, if that sounds good to you, pick up a used copy of Sigmund's book. Or maybe, by the time you read this, it will be back in print.

Rating: 5
Summary: A Superb Introduction to Contemporary Evolutionary Theory
Comment: In "Games of Life" Karl Sigmund has written a book that manages to be informative, thought provoking and witty as well. He has managed to pull together a number of areas into one cohesive thread; contemprary topics such as complexity in population dynamics, game thoery as applied to natural selection and self-reproducing automata are discussed in a suprisingly clear and intuitive manner. Readers interested in artifical life, the dynamics of population, self organized complexity will find this a stimulating and entertaining read.

Similar Books:

	Title: Evolutionary Games and Population Dynamics by Josef Hofbauer, Karl Sigmund ISBN: 052162570X Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 01 July, 1998 List Price(USD): $40.00
	Title: Evolution and the Theory of Games by John Maynard Smith ISBN: 0521288843 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 1982 List Price(USD): $33.00
	Title: The Complexity of Cooperation by Robert M. Axelrod ISBN: 0691015678 Publisher: Princeton University Press Pub. Date: 18 August, 1997 List Price(USD): $17.12
	Title: Game Theory Evolving by Herbert Gintis ISBN: 0691009430 Publisher: Princeton University Press Pub. Date: 22 May, 2000 List Price(USD): $37.50
	Title: The Major Transitions in Evolution by John Maynard Smith, Eors Szathmary ISBN: 019850294X Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 February, 1997 List Price(USD): $44.50