This weighty book was awarded a Pulizer Prize for non-fiction. It is a book that can be read in many ways. The author set out to give a layperson’s account of a very complex (and astonishingly powerful) theorem of the mathematician Gödel. He ended up writing a book that touches on programming, the theory of consciousness, self reference and ‘strange loops’ in the works of Bach, Escher and other artists. He uses an interconnected series of essays that all build towards his central idea. He also includes very entertaining discussions between characters like Achilles, an anteater, and a tortoise. If reading it cover to cover is too much of a challenge it can be treated as a book to dip into for intriguing and fascinating ideas. Unlike many other books of theory and philosophy it is packed with illustrations, graphics and graphical curios.
I commend this book to those who are curious, to those who are fascinated by philosophy and ideas, and for those who are attracted by things like “self referential sentences”... my favourite being “this sentence no verb”.
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