I read this in the library today in about an hour and enjoyed it a lot. Although it deals with philosophical concepts that I had very little prior clue about, I find it very accessible and compelling. The art style is appealingly vivid and the layers of narrative work well. What I found especially effective was the contrast drawn between the heights of theory and abstraction and the mental and familial stability of those reaching them. The use of the Oresteia at the end was also excellent - I have a soft spot for Greek tragedy.

Now I feel better informed and less intimidated by Wittgenstein et al. If there are other graphic novels about philosophy, I'd be keen to read them. ( )

If not the most gripping graphic novel I've read, this is certainly on of the most intellectual. It tells a simplified and slightly dramatized life of Bertrand Russell, using the structure of a reflective lecture on logic's application to real life, given in the US in the early days of World War II when the debate about whether to enter the war was hot and heavy. Add yet another framing structure where the co-creators of the book debate the themes of logic and madness, and that Papadimitriou is invited to co-author because as a computer scientist he can explain exactly what Russell, Frege, Goedel, Hilbert, and the others were trying to do and whether they succeeded or not. As both a math major who focused on pure logic, and a computer scientist myself, I can't judge how well the explanation of theory works for others. For me, it felt sincere but incomplete, no pun intended.

Reommended. ( )

Rated "Indifferent" in our old book database. ( )

7/10
Grand in scope but let down in part by the medium and some baffling decisions by the creators, Logicomix is still a fascinating read.
I've always loved it when serious topics are explored visually, whether in animation or books - but Logicomix overextends and underextends itself in turn. At the altar of brevity and mass appeal, it sacrifices accuracy, but this wouldn't have mattered so much if the crucial details covered were at the least in-depth, which they were sadly not.
A case in point is that Apostolos mentions Godel, Wittgenstein, Hilbert, von Neumann, and other giants, but he annoyingly glosses over their contributions. The book also repeatedly jumps out and into Athens or the 'real world' instead of the comic world to explain some of its decisions to the reader - but this breaking the fourth wall is only partially effective since its novelty wears off quickly. It is utilized to excellent effect only near the end.
Where the book shines the most is letting its audience know, through comics, about Godel's incompleteness theorem of the first and second-order, Russell's paradox, and Wittgenstein's metaphysical theories - a sentence I could not imagine writing a day ago. And that fact alone is worth most, in not all of, the acclaim. ( )

Plus un 3,5 pour moi . La premiere partie du livre est excellente , le côté humain de Russell aide à "dédramatiser " la complexité de son travail dans le domaine de la logique .
J'ai beaucoup moins aimé la fin . Trop "sèche " avec beaucoup d'interventions des dessinateurs ( pages entières pour illustrer l'ambiance dans le bureau des créateurs de la bd ...j'aurais pu facilement m'en passer )
Le carnet de note clôture la bd sur un belle note avec des présentations/résumé de la vies des personnalités (et notions importantes ) qui apparaissent dans la bd .
( )

Oh, this was wonderful. I've long been a fan of Bertrand Russell, and it was great to read something written so well about his life and ideas, and the ideas of those around him. Yes, some elements were fictionalized, but I think the creative team still had a good grip on Russell's personality. I was very impressed. ( )

A pesar de las adaptaciones, variaciones e invenciones, una obra apasionante para aquellos interesados en la Lógica, las Matemáticas y Bertrand Russell ( )

Tema interesante, a veces difícil de entender sin una base. Me dió ganas de estudiar matemáticas. ( )

Wow. My math and philosophy-loving son tipped me off to this one, and it's really quite an ingenious little book. Logicomix is a tour through the history of logic, and an introduction to the major 20th century European thinkers who sought to nail down its essence and mathematical rules. Structured around Bertrand Russell's life story, it's also an entertaining and engrossing graphic novel that packs a visual punch. That's quite a combination, and one that enabled me to gain a passing familiarity with some brain-bending concepts that I never would have wrestled with otherwise. Bravo to the Logicomix team on a job well done! ( )

This project deserves accolades for making a complex topic like the foundations of mathematics more accessible through popular storytelling. The art style wasn’t quite my cup of tea, but it was consistent with moments of tongue-in-cheek (the illustrators knew to distance themselves from the behaviors of their characters). While the writers took liberties with fact for narrative cohesion, I appreciate they show these intellectual titans as flawed men: there was no glossing over the misogyny, anti-semitism, and arrogance. ( )

Eh, it's fine. It looks great, it moves but fundementally, if I want to know about Bertrand Russell, I will read his wikipedia page, followed by a biography. Or one of his books. I'm failing to see how this is much more than a finely illustrated wikipedia page. ( )

Overall, a good story about a topic I knew little about (the life of Bertrand Russell). I wasn't thrilled with the narrative structure, which sometimes got lost in its own ebb and flow and felt a bit clunky at times. But still, it was a decent tale. ( )

Bertrand Russel was an interesting guy, if not super nice to his first wife and hand-waving it away by saying that he wasn't a great person at the time. I'm into graphic novel biographies and mathematicians and ethics. I also liked the musing on logic vs. insanity. ( )

It was hard for me to think of the world of mathematics being on shaky ground. I graduated with a Math degree, so much of the mathematical material was familiar. The biographical and historical information on Russell was fascinating. This lends more power to the idea that there is a relationship between genius and madness. I'd love to see what they could do with a similar book on Turing's life. ( )

An account of the search for the philosophical foundations of mathematics told in graphic novel form. This mostly focuses on the life of Bertrand Russell, and it can also be read as a partial, potted biography of the same. Beautifully drawn, enjoyable and accessible.

Gareth Southwell is a philosopher, writer and illustrator.

Super interesting, this is somewhere between a non-fiction biography of Bertrand Russell and a history of early logical thinking. ( )

-One sentence theme: The story of Bertrand Russell's life and his quest for the foundations of mathematics and truth in graphic format.
-Plot summary:The authors and graphic artists start with their attempt to depict the life and work of Bertrand Russell in his search for the basis for mathematics in logic. The plot goes back and forth between the authors discussions and the influences on philosophy in the last decades of the 19th century and World War II. There are no easy answers to the problems of human kind, neither can they all be solved with logic. But it is the questioning of these theories that leads to democracy and eventually the invention of the computer.
-Personal response: I was initially confused by the format and nonlinear timetable of events. But I was drawn into the search for answers and the underlying fear that questioning too much will lead to madness. These questions, or tools of reason, are just tools that can be used for good or bad. Everyone must come to their own conclusions.
-Curricular connections: A very different approach to Math and geometric proofs. This is a possible answer to students' questions about how Mathematics is relevant to their lives: it's not the numbers, it's the thinking that counts. ( )

Way overrated. It's just a biopic of Russell. I learn Math from any Ted video better than from this book. If we can get the message by just surfing into Wikipedia, why spend so much energy in drawing pictures and writing dialogue. ( )

A decent, if shaky, biography of Bertrand Russell, with brief explanations of the chief problems of logic and philosophy he took on. For someone who's already read about this, it's pretty shallow and suffers from the "Best Of" disease, but I also don't see it making a huge impact on readers new to Russell, Cantor, Wittgenstein, and Goedel. It's all a bit wishy-washy, with a distracting self-referential streak, with authors arguing about the book's flaws themselves; I'm sure it seemed charming, but it comes across as confusing more than anything else. The illustration style is great, with some unconvincing color work. ( )

I know more about mathematical theory that I did before, but it still isn't much.

‘Organic life, we are told, has developed gradually from the protozoan to the philosopher, and this development, we are assured, is indubitably an advance. Unfortunately it is the philosopher, not the protozoan, who gives us this assurance.’
—Bertrand Russell

‘Logic! Good gracious! What rubbish! How can I tell what I think till I see what I say?’
—EM Forster

Logicomix has the admirable idea of presenting us, in comic form, with the story of the search for the logical underpinnings of mathematics in the early twentieth century, told mostly through the life of Bertrand Russell.

Usually, when this story comes up at all, it seems to be told by way of a prelude to the birth of computing (in, for instance, Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, which rushes past Russell to get to Turing), so it was nice here to see it placed front and centre. And on the whole, the details of these often quite abstruse theoretical investigations are very well explained here, embedded as they are in the context of the main players' personal lives and professional rivalries.

I really love Bertrand Russell for the way that his professional logicalism did not impede his towering moral authority – he embodied a pacifistic, anti-authoritarian activism that was awakened during the First World War and that lasted until the end of his life, when he was still being dragged away from protests by police in his eighties. This moral sensibility takes a backseat to the quest for logic in the book, though it's definitely there – a framing story concerns Russell's feelings about pacifism in the 1939 war, and within the main story the authors are careful to show the effects of the first war on all the major characters.

I have to admit, with my ideal image of Russell in mind, it was painful for me to read about the way he behaved towards his first wife and his children, about which I knew nothing before I read this. The authors – as they themselves explain – are very concerned to make sure that this is a story about these mathematicians' and philosophers' private lives as well as their professional investigations. Though I have to admit, the drama in the forbidden relationships and family secrets never seemed quite as engaging to me as the actual nerdy stuff about logic.

I had lingering doubts as I read this of whether it was really suited to the comics form: somehow, it never really felt like it was playing to the strengths of the medium. I was also not convinced by the choice to include several metanarrational interludes in which the authors and illustrators talk about how best to tell the story; this seemed, on the whole, more of a distraction than anything else, although a final section set during a present-day production of the Oresteia is a tour-de-force.

There's lots to get out of this book and I'd definitely recommend it, but in the end it's one of those pieces that I admired more for its concept than its execution. Illogical perhaps – but that, as the book demonstrates, is to be expected. ( )

This book was okay. It's a comic that straddles historical fiction and biography, providing the life story of Bertrand Russell as well as some background in developments of logic in the early twentieth century. It's occasionally interrupted by pages where the creators of the comic discuss creating the comic. These moments I found twee and not very insightful. The main story is fine, though not very deep, and I was irritated at the number of things the creators outright made up yet still ascribe character significance to-- the whole book is driven by a dichotomy between madness and logic in Russell's life that has no basis in reality.

I enjoyed this book quite a bit. The art is fun, and I found the discussions about logic and its foibles interesting. I think I would have liked it better as a straight biography of Bertrand Russell; the drive to make a fictional story out of what is actually a pretty interesting subject confuses me. Why add layers of fiction to something good enough on its own?

I admit that the idea of "historical fiction" just doesn't do it for me. Makes no sense. Tell a true story and call it historical, or tell a traditional story and call it fiction. I don't like blending the two.

And, finally, the end of the book lost me. What was the point? Maybe I am too tired to put it all together. But, rather than wrapping things up in a meaningful, poignant way, I felt like the end just sort of petered out. Like they were just done and wanted to draw some cool pictures.

But still, worth a couple days' read. ( )

The idea behind Logicomix in and of itself is fairly unique and hard to imagine (which I suppose lends itself well to the novel's theme of reality sometimes being a rather big object of uncertainty that is difficult to represent through abstraction, and that this may or may not lead to, or arise from, mental complications such as neuroticism), being a pseudo biography of (mostly mathematical) philosopher Bertrand Russel and his attempts to build foundations for mathematics with other big figures in this field at the time, such as Wittgenstein and Kurt Godel, that is also a graphic novel. I say pseudo biography because the authors are clear to point out that they've taken some liberties with Russel's life to make it seem more like an actual novel or story rather than a non-fictional biography. This isn't to say it's a complete "what if" kind of novel, as the story does in fact follow Russel's life accurately for the most part, especially when it comes to his and other philosophers' main arguments, but some meetings between characters in the story are either loosely supported by real evidence, or probably untrue.

Either way, the result is a rather interesting novel-biography that not only has a fairly nice-looking art style to it, that is perhaps deliberately minimalistic to an extent to compliment the theme of "pure simplicity" that the authors imply at least some mathematicians wish to attain, and also has a lovely amount of detail to the settings and inspired interpretations of actual philosophers (seeing Wittgenstein's huge eyes was fairly enjoyable from the moment he entered the stage), but is also a great, "user-friendly" introduction to mathematics in general and an enjoyable exploration into what it means to be a mathematician, philosopher, analytic, or anyone interested in "certain truth" really. Two other great themes behind the book, I'd say, is that it A) Gives readers characters to relate to with its makers, as the authors and artists often chime in to break the fourth wall and show their reactions to various events throughout the book and discussions on how to best write it, and (B) Shows how math truly is 'everywhere'. I had heard about this before in a TED Talk, but it wasn't until Wittgenstein started comparing language to abstract symbols and Russel discussed his attempts to utilize logic as a pacifist to solve the political problems of the two world wars that I truly began to get a better understanding of what this idea means.

All in all, it's a delight to read with a unique premise that is actually pulled very well off. If you're at all surprised by the notion of a math book that is also a page-turner and character study, then you may want to take a look into this book. ( )

While I commend the effort, I wonder who the supposed audience for this Graphic Novel really is.
Case in point: I studied Godel, and I have a bit more of the vaguest idea of what his proof did to Russel's efforts.
I can't say that the graphic novel is making a poor effort to explain it, but for really judging it, you need a complete newcomer to the field.
Find one, and ask him/her what he got from the book.

How many (newcomers) would buy the book in order to get a better understanding of Godel's Theorem? How many (of those who don't know it) would care even a little bit?

So, if you are "geek" and know the field already, it's interesting, if not "great".
For everyone else, I am afraid it will fail to even register.
Please prove me wrong... did you lend it to non-mathematically friends? With what results? ( )