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Chaos is a history of discovery. It chronicles, in the words of the scientists themselves, their conflicts and frustrations, their emotions and moments of revelation. After reading Chaos, you will never look at the world in quite the same way again.
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This is not a purely technical book. Instead, it focuses as much on the scientists studying chaos as on the chaos itself. In the pages of Gleick's book, the reader meets dozens of extraordinary and eccentric people. For instance, Mitchell Feigenbaum, who constructed and regulated his life by a 26-hour clock and watched his waking hours come in and out of phase with those of his coworkers at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
As for chaos itself, Gleick does an outstanding job of explaining the thought processes and investigative techniques that researchers bring to bear on chaos problems. Rather than attempt to explain Julia sets, Lorenz attractors, and the Mandelbrot Set with gigantically complicated equations, Chaos relies on sketches, photographs, and Gleick's wonderful descriptive prose.
You can't always have the best of both worlds, though, and so at times, a more scientifically or mathematically reader will be frustrated with the lack of detail concerning some of the interesting concepts developed here. For example, Gleick mentions fractional dimensionality, but fails to really explain it well, probably assuming that it is beyond most of his readers. This is probably a safe bet for layman readers, but left me very frustrated in places. Also, Gleick's writing (praised as "novelistic") gets overly melodramatic in places, and the reader gets the distinct impression that he's trying too hard to make this book accessible.
But even despite these flaws, this is an excellent introduction to chaos theory, and worth reading for scientists and laymen alike. This book makes you want to learn more about chaos theory, and does a good job at making chaos accessible. It was written over fifteen years ago, though, so a more recent book on chaos would be a good supplement.
Personally when I first read this book an year ago, I was able to comprehend that non-linear dynamics and chaos present a new set of tools to describe systems in all realms of science. The study of chaos contains key to understanding our nature better. Complexity is beautiful in form and patterns in chaos both awe and fascinate! An year later I am still trying to understand the technical details and mathematicals of chaos and nonlinear dynamics, but I feel an excitement for which I must thank Gleick! And not surprisingly, I have now moved to research with an open mind about possibilities in domains of nonlinearty.
Like I Ching said, "Before the beginning of great brilliance, there must be chaos". Maybe as Gleick claims, Chaos will be rated just below relativity and quantum mechanics as the key discoveries of last century!! Read it: it is fun!
