This is an interesting book and I would like to whole heartedly recommend it, but like a lot of modern popular books on science it presents the results of the science but without really explaining how the results were obtained. Science becomes a 'gee-wiz' topic in which the results must be taken a faith. A good book on science makes the reader think and stimulates them to explore for themselves. Not here; instead on page 75 the reader is presented with a series of paradoxes. A reader with some knowledge of statistics and probability with be able to resolve them, but the rest will come away with the idea that science is a closed book. This is not what popular science writing should be about. The tragedy here is that much of this book is very interesting especially the chapters of Cellular Automata and the evolution of co-operation. But finally, I just found this book too frustrating. 'Dear Prof Sigmund, please try again. Cover less material more completely; give worked examples and when so much of the material can be presented on the computer point the reader to where they can find the software so that they can explore cellular automata or the prisoner's dilemma for themselves. That is what science writing is about.'
Penguin, 244 pages
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