I’m about halfway through the book, and it’s a so-so bio of a great man. The writing is a bit weak, with inconsistent levels of detail all over the place. I was hoping that Shannon would merit something better. Ed Thorp’s recent autobiography also touches on Shannon when describing their joint time at MIT, and is an interesting read until the last quarter of the book.
Cory mentions Gleick’s “The Information,” which covers much of the same material. Gleick can be a good writer, but when he goes off point he’s very tiresome (his recent “Time Travel” is a good example). My issue with “The Information” is that Gleick gets a fundamental point wrong on only the second page, ascribing the naming of the word “bit” to Shannon when it was in fact coined by fellow Bell Labs scientist John Tukey. Made me wonder how many other details he got wrong.
My favorite book about the dawn of the computer age is “Turing’s Cathedral,” by George Dyson. Dyson mentions Shannon at points, but the focus is John Von Neumann and his collaborators at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Shannon had a fellowship at the IAS the year before he joined Bell Labs, and interacted with Von Neumann as well as other IAS residents including Weyl, Godel, and Einstein.
