Dear Readers,
This page lists all of the reviews of this book that I am aware of. If you come across any reviews that are not listed here, please let me know! Click here to send any comments.
Thanks!
Melanie Mitchell
Booklist (Bryce Christensen)
(Accessible on-line only with a personal or institutional subscription
to Booklist.) Excerpt: "Readers will marvel at the sheer
range of settings in which complex systems operate....With refreshing
clarity, Mitchell invites nonspecialists to share in these
researchers’ adventures in recognizing and measuring complexity and
then predicting its cascading effects....Mind-expanding."
Choice
(American Library Association, accessible on-line only with a personal or institutional subscription
to Choice.) Excerpt: "This volume is an engaging and lucid introduction to complex systems....What emerges is not only an understanding of important results in each of these specialized areas, but some sense of how they combine to analyze complex systems---though not yet---as the author responsibly and accurately points out, a science of complexity. Though the book is aptly described as a guided tour for a general audience, it will also be useful to advanced students and researchers in adjacent areas....Highly recommended."
Nature (Mark Buchanan) Excerpt: "How can something be dependent and autonomous at the same time? And why do so many systems in nature show this hierarchical organization? No one has answered these questions, but in Complexity, computer scientist Melanie Mitchell of the Santa Fe Institute, New Mexico, offers a valuable snapshot of the growing field of complex-systems science from which the answers may eventually arise."
Science (Iain Couzin) Excerpt: [Mitchell] "proves an enthusiastic, sincere, and knowledgeable guide to ongoing debates in network theory, scaling, and artificial intelligence. As disciplinary boundaries fade and complexity science permeates the mainstream, she questions where we go from here. Throughout, she neither overemphasizes the progress made so far nor underestimates the important role that complexity research will have to play in addressing some of the most pressing scientific questions of our time."
The Oregonian (James Gardner) Excerpt: "The best popular science books are those that give the reader the sense of looking over the shoulder of a leading researcher doing cutting-edge work at the frontier of scientific inquiry. Walter Isaacson's recent biography of Einstein belongs in this category. So too does Melanie Mitchell's 'Complexity: A Guided Tour,' a comprehensive new book chronicling the latest advances in the sciences of complexity."
The Quarterly Review of Biology (Mark Changizi) Excerpt:"If Mitchell’s book were required reading for undergraduate freshmen, I would anticipate a large surge in the number of students interested not only in complexity, but interested in
science more generally. And not just more students, but students more exercised about what
may lie ahead as they attempt come to grips with nature."
Emergence: Complexity & Organization (Steven Khan) Excerpt:"The freshness of the book's presentation of the core ideas of the main branches of the complexity sciences...is likely to render it an oft-recommended starting point and perhaps one of this generation's standard introductions to the exciting worlds of the sciences of complexity."
Artificial Life (Luis Izquierdo) Excerpt: "Professor Mitchell's book is most enjoyable, truly inspiring, skillfully written, and, above all, beautifully clear."
Genetic Programming and Evolvable Machines (Felix Streichert) Excerpt: "Complexity, A Guided Tour is a well written, easy to understand, and
entertaining piece of popular science."