I actually got a lot more out of the book than I was expecting. If you are looking to read this book to get the answers to some challenging puzzle-type interview questions, than you are probably going to be a little disappointed, since the people interviewing you are going to be aware of this book and hence won't be asking you the same questions as covered in the book. But if you are looking to learn techniques that will help you perform better on puzzle type questions, then you can gain a lot from this book.

Poundstone covers a lot of ground; he tackles the history of interviewing for high tech companies, touching on the different types of high-pressure interviews that are employed in financials services as well as top notch software and consulting companies. He goes into the details of the fabled Microsoft interview as an example of some of toughest interview questions and the most high-pressure tactics. Challenging puzzles, and techniques to help you solve them are covered, but don't expect just to learn some answers to tough questions, be prepared to learn techniques to help you solve challenging puzzles. He does give people a peek behind the puzzle genre curtain, and explains the different types of puzzles and how to tackle them. Unless you are a puzzle buff, you are definitely going to be at disadvantage when it comes to these types of questions. The puzzles that use the concept of "truly logical beings" is probably the most baffling to most people. The type of puzzles that involve a structured answer to a very open ended question are also covered i.e. how would you move Mount Fuji, the insight that you don't need to know the details of Mount Fuji or have to know some trick to answer this question is an eye opener to most. The type of puzzle that involves a breakthrough of assumptions, and uses all the information provided to you, and nothing else is required will also give people some insight. Poundstone does cover a lot of ground in looking into Breakthrough thinking (if you are looking for a book that goes into more detail, Poundstone's bibliography includes a great book - "Eureka Effect" or "Archimedes in the Bathtub" - the same book; just different titles for the hardback and paperback; by David Perkins).

This is a fascinating book, which will give interviewers insights into what kind of questions to ask, and why. It will also give prospective interviewees some of the background to the puzzle genre and help them tackle these puzzles on a equal footing with puzzle buffs. As stated in the subtitle, "Microsoft's Cult of Puzzle" this book also gives insights into Microsoft and looks at depth into why they employ the tactics that they do, and how this is part of the plan to look for the next "Bill Clone". An interesting aside is to think about if a 'Bill Clone' would even want to work for Microsoft. My guess is that he/she would probably want to setup up their own company to topple Microsoft. So employing tactics to try and find 'Bill Clones' is probably a waste of time, the best they will achieve are "Bill Wannabe's", which their type of interview will help find.

You should probably read this book if you fall into one of the categories below:

1)Prospective interviewees for High Tech, consulting or financial services companies. It won't give you all the answers to memorize, but it will let you in on the puzzle genre and some of its 'rules".
2)Interviewers/HR - If you are looking to employ puzzles type questions to hire creative employees, this will give you some insights into what questions to use and why. There are probably better books on the intricacies of interviewing, but this will give you background needed to use puzzles in the interview process (if you work out that's what you need).
3)People interested in problem solving, puzzles and creativity. This covers a lot of ground in these areas and it gives you a few references for further reading.

If you are just looking to get the answers to some puzzle questions, then you can find them in this book. But I am not sure this worth the price of the book. Unfortunately, I think there is going to be a large audience who fall into this category.

A great way to spend Spring Break if you're looking for some fun for your mind.

Paradoxes are fascinating. You may not agree with Jorge Luis Borges when he speculates that paradoxes and antinomies are evidence that the "undivided divinity within us" has "dreamt the world" (although there is actually a pretty good case that something like this is so). But at any rate, a good paradox is -- to borrow a phrase that was not available when Poundstone wrote this book -- an "incongruity in the structure of the Matrix," an indication that there's _something_ subtly wrong with our intellectual take on reality, whether or not we can agree on _what's_ wrong. (In general but with rare exceptions, there isn't any widespread agreement about exactly how to resolve any of the famous paradoxes, even the ancient ones credited to Zeno of Elea.)

William Poundstone's _Labyrinths of Reason_ is as good an introduction as I know to this entire area of philosophical thought. His exposition is clear and intelligible without sacrificing either accuracy or depth, and he tackles a very broad range of philosophical puzzles, from the problems of inductive logic to NP-completeness. Moreover, he's clearly fascinated by these puzzles and he infects the reader with that fascination. If you don't like Poundstone's book, then this entire subject probably isn't your cup of tea.

If you _do_ like Poundstone's book, you'll find it a window onto what may be a whole new world (if you haven't read other books on this subject before). It's a great way to introduce yourself to mind-bending problems at the foundations of several fields: philosophy, of course (especially epistemology), but also the theory of complexity and computability, artificial intelligence, and even some aspects of theology.

Depending which features interest you most, you might go on to Douglas Hofstadter's Pulitzer Prize-winning tour-de-force _Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid_, a magical mystery tour that is primarily intended as a defense of artificial intelligence. (Can machines be conscious? Yes, Hofstadter argues, because we are such machines ourselves.) Or you may prefer to start with his _Metamagical Themas_, part of which deals with the Prisoner's Dilemma. (Robert Axelrod's _The Evolution of Cooperation_ will be a good follow-up too.)

Or you might want to read another good introductory discussion with a somewhat different "take"; in that case you'll want to consider R.M. Sainsbury's _Paradoxes_, which is aimed at arousing philosophical interest in these problems. If you want to see an attempt at a general solution of the full spectrum of paradoxes, check out Nicholas Rescher's _Paradoxes: Their Roots, Range, and Resolution_.

Or you may want to move on to logic and logic puzzles. In that case Raymond Smullyan is your man. Find used copies of _What Is the Name of This Book?, _This Book Needs No Title_, and _5000 B.C._, and/or get a new copy of _The Tao Is Silent_. Or, if you want to dive into rigorous formal logic, try his _First-Order Logic_ and then _Godel's Incompleteness Theorems_. (You may want to read Graham Priest's _Logic: A Very Short Introduction_ first.)

Or if it's the philosophical-theological aspects of infinity that got your attention, try Rudy Rucker's _Infinity and the Mind_. Rucker also deals with, and tries to resolve, some of the paradoxes discussed by Poundstone (e.g. the Berry paradox, involving "the smallest number not nameable in fewer than nineteen syllables," which is apparently an eighteen-syllable name for that very number).

Wherever you go next, if you're not already familiar with these subjects, you won't find a better introduction than Poundstone's book. If any of the above sounds interesting to you, start here.

It was quite interesting to read how he grew up in an environment of anti-Semitism in Hungary yet his parents seemed to promote a funny type of mish-mash of beliefs such as having Christmas presents! In fact, many aspects of von Neumann's personal and spiritual side, including his early conversion to Catholocism and later call for a priest as he lay dying are unfortunately only hinted at.

I point this out because the other aspects of von Neumann's character, his prodigious mathematical talent and his fervent belief that the US strike first with atomic bombs against the then-developing USSR, are quite evident here. What comes across is a general sense that von Neumann was very arrogant about his knowledge and ability to solve everything within the theoretical world. It appears that von Neumann truly believed he was the most intelligent mathematician at that time and one gets the feeling that anyone who might have come close (John Nash comes to mind) was downplayed as working on something 'trivial'.

Luckily, we also get a glimpse into von Neumann's marriage where his mathematical abilities certainly didn't help him to acheive much happiness. Judging by the many references to his constant fights and stream of rather childish letters his emotional development lagged far behind his other abilities. This is also seen in his one-upmanship demonstrated during the many parties he and his wife threw for colleagues during his years at Princeton.

But it is the interplay of his arrogance with the development of the atomic bomb that is the most interesting. It is scary to see how close the world came to all-out war due to the constant preaching by von Neumann (and some of the others in RAND) that game theory absolutely demonstrated that the US must strike first or there could be no resolution to the developing political conflict. I suspect von Neumann's seemingly purposive (probably due to his ego) ignorance of Turing played a deeper role here since one wonders why he didn't develop the theories, later put forward by Chaitin and Kolmogorov, about the limitations of knowledge.

That is, it is surprising how arrogant he was based on the fact that Godel was there at the same time! Oh well, it is lucky for us that we can look back and read about the history with the knowledge that people didn't take von Neumann as seriously as Dr. Strangelove - since it certainly appears that von Neumann could have been used as the basis for that character.

Anyway, this is certainly worth reading for a fascinating glimpse into the times. One just hopes that the arrogance and ego will one day fade so that we can move the hands of the 'doomsday' clock back.

As fascinating as all this was (and he tells the story well), I was most interested in the final third of the book which discusses games other than the prisoner's dilemma: chicken, the volunteer's dilemma, deadlock, stag hunt, the largest-number game, and especially the dollar auction. The games are described not just in terms of numerical payouts, but in situations that can be imagined in real life. And Poundstone also mentions game theory in relation to evolution, and tit for tat strategies in iterated prisoner's dilemmas.

This is a book for the general reader. You need not be a mathematician to understand the contents. Indeed, it is a pretty simple book, and you will only learn basic aspects of game theory if you haven't encountered it before. What you can expect is a story about von Neumann and the cold war and the interesting paradoxes that such situations create.

I feel that an absolute must in a biography, is fairness. I neither want to read idolatry, nor a muckracking book. This book was fair in its depiction of Sagan: a brilliant scientist, who cared about the world, science, writing, and his own ego. I especially liked the sections on his work with NASA on the various Mars missions; where do we land, what experiments do we perform, and just what do the results mean, anyway?

There was enough information about his background and personal life to keep it interesting, but not so much that it bored me. I was unaware of his first marriage to Lynn Margulis; a famous scientist in her own right.

This biography moved very quickly; I always wanted to pick it back up again. Lastly, you do not need any type of science background to understand this book. It is a biography, not a science text at all.

I sampled Carl's life through William Poundstone's Carl Sagan: A Life in the Cosmos (Henry Holt, 473 pages, paperback, $16) when it first appeared, just before the other book came to print. Having my appetite whetted, I purchased Davidson's book but let it sit on the shelf awhile-after all, how different could it be? How wrong I was!

Poundstone's book indeed introduces the reader to all of the details of his life, but with a somewhat detached viewpoint, a workman-like effort. This is reflected in the chapter breaks arranged by years and location. Keay Davidson's Carl Sagan: A Life (Wiley, 540 pages, paperback,$18), on the other hand, gets emotionally involved with the story of Sagan's life, and weaves some themes among the details-not quite judgmental, but observant. Davidson makes his logical breaks at Sagan's projects and ideas. While this makes for some jumps and repeats, these are forgiven for his more interesting overall flow. Both authors are science writers of some note, and not scientists themselves.

Read Poundstone for the science-it is complete and detailed. Particularly well done and relevant to recent NASA discoveries is the story of Carl's involvement in the Viking probes that looked for life on Mars in the 1970s. The disagreements on the choice of landing sites and the critical decisions on which experiments to repeat or change a bit between the limited number of runs reveal the tough choices that have to be made in science, often with insufficient information.

Davidson's forte', however, is the flare for interpreting Sagan's vibrant personality and his personal life as revealed through both his public presence and private affairs. The author spends more time on Carl's books (including Pulitzer-winning Dragons of Eden), TV works (popular visits on Johnny Carson and his PBS hit, "Cosmos"), and movie (Contact, featuring a performance by Jodie Foster that would have pleased him greatly had he lived to see the film's completion). Yet, Carl's entry into the public arena was not always looked favorably upon by his peers. His having been rejected for tenure at Harvard and blackballed for membership in the prestigious National Academy of Science are certainly partially attributable to his limelight activities. I suspect his colleagues, with their nose to the grindstone of their often boring sub-sub-specialties were secretly envious of this rising star and generalist of science. Here was a man who studied the stars, warned of nuclear winter, got arrested in a protest, developed a "best of Earth" album to affix to the starbound Voyager probe, and debunked pseudoscience. He appeared in NASA press conferences as comfortably as on the Tonight Show. Published articles in the Astrophysical Journal and in the Sunday supplement Parade magazine.

If you want a taste of how modern science operates, and of the personal hustle necessary for success, Poundstone's work covers the bases, and does so with more depth. Davidson appears to have more details with an extensive list of reference notes, but it is mostly in the form of quotations that are of low impact in the unfolding story. He also has an annoying habit born of the word processing age: familiar phrases, and other chunks of text that are repeated a bit too frequently to not be noticed.

For the person intrigued with the romance of science, and romance in general, Davidson's A Life is for you. Not to be sexist, but if women are truly from Venus and men from Mars (and Sagan made fundamental contributions to the study of both planets), the female readers would want to read Davidson and the men Poundstone. I'm not sure whether Carl would approve of this advice-while he was obviously a chauvinist at home, at least with his first two wives, he was a promoter of female scientists at work!

If you read them both, I would read Poundstone first, for the science. With that as a basis you can allow your self to be immersed in the personality developments presented by Davidson. In either book you will find rewarding reading about a man sorely missed by those of us who appreciate both doing good science and bringing it to the public.

I thought both books were excellent, although I would give Poundstone a slight edge. I recommend that Sagan enthusiasts read both, and in the order I did--first Davidson, then Poundstone. Davidson's book is a little more linear and narrative, so it gives a better overview. Poundstone's is more detailed, being especially strong in discussion of the purely scientific aspects of Sagan's career. His coverage of the nuclear winter controversy is particularly good. On the other hand, Poundstone jumps around more, so it's easier to follow if you already have Davidson under your belt.

The reason I give Poundstone the edge is that I feel he is more journalistically evenhanded than Davidson, who wastes no opportunity to advance his political agenda. Poundstone is careful to point out the strengths of the arguments of Sagan's opponents, while Davidson dismisses them summarily.

Some of his choices of important questions to answer seem a bit odd (what's the most difficult shot in billiards) but even these result in a brief, interesting chapter devoted to some topic I'd never previously pondered.

It's obvious that Poundstone has learned since releasing "Big Secrets". He's learned to tell a better story, learned to create suspense, learned what information is utterly useless dreck and what is genuinely entertaining. Both he and the reader benefit from this a great deal.

He's still making wildly speculative guesses about food contents, but here we get a nice tale about how he went about obtaining a sample of Oysters Rockefeller and sent it to a lab. He's still giving away magicians' secrets, but now we are amused by the little backstory he gives his investigation. Overall, this book is better written and is a better read.

One complaint I still have is Poundstone's attitude. His tone is snotty throughout the book; he is critical of people who don't know enough to dress for Antoine's restaurant, of Disneyland, of magicians in general. Rather than revel in the fun of discovery and slyly let you in on the joke, he uses his words to puncture secrets and deflate them, like an evil older brother spilling the beans about Santa Claus. If you are a fan of Disneyland's Haunted Mansion, his expose' will seem particularly harsh.

"Secrets" is fun and will definitely entertain you. I hope the author continues to learn and grow with each book. If so, I look forward to "Biggest Secrets"

Poundstone's writing style is entertaining; he reveals the great secrets of popular culture without even a hint of malice. (And the recipe makes a darned fine cookie, too!)

His similar, earlier books, "Big Secrets" and "Bigger Secrets," are also excellent. I only hope he finds another superlative so "Biggest Secrets" won't be the last volume in this series!

This series of books (Big, Bigger, and Biggest Secrets) is a celebration of all things wonderfully useless.

Do you need to know where Walt Disney is buried? No, but it's kinda cool to know that the author tracked Walt's grave down. Do you need to know where the secret drinking club is in Disneyland? No again, but it'll change the way you think about the Happiest Place on Earth.

I was in utter delight when Bigger Secrets came out, and I was overjoyed to find Biggest Secrets. Alas, however, a fourth edition has yet to be printed -- what nefarious secret could have caused this? Mr. Poundstone, please strike again! There's so much useless stuff I don't know about yet..