Quantum Computing Since Democritus

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I know, a lot of us wring our hands at spending 30 plus bucks US on a popularization of science book, 400 pages or not. So, the decision often comes down to Kindle-- significant savings BUT, are the diagrams and LaTex slaughtered so bad you can't read it? Not in this case! First, the author doesn't HAVE that many formulas and diagrams, and equations are generally limited to P=NP (or not) type formats, which are given in the text and bold, so you don't end up with busted page breaks in the middle of illustrations or formulae. Formula display is not a problem unique to Kindle-- most ereaders and tablets have an issue with them. The topics in this book are more conceptual, historic and descriptive (frankly, almost philosophical), so the eread format is just fine. If you like to make notes in "heavy" reading books like this, you'll obviously need a pencil and paper nearby, but need to judge whether getting it quickly and for 12 bucks less is worth that. The links / added resources are up to date, live and not broken, another advantage of the Kindle format. If you read and enjoyed The Golden Ticket ( The Golden Ticket: P, NP, and the Search for the Impossible ), you'll also like this book-- very intellectually stimulating, and brings us up to date on a lot of recent thinking in the intersection between computing and physics. Highly recommended. Kindle Tip: This is one of those titles that has a very GENEROUS (thank you publisher/author!) "look inside" feature on Amazon-- be sure to check it out! You'll see that even "proof" type formulas are given as bullets, so read fine on kindle. Best, the preview itself IS in kindle format, so you get the double advantage of WYSIWYG if you subsequently order via Kindle/ cloud/ tablet, etc.

I am usually too lazy to write reviews, even when I really enjoy reading a book, but I am happy to make an exception for this one. From the very first page, Scott Aaronson takes you through an amazing tour through many fields of human thought: from the Zermelo-Fraenkel axioms to quantum mechanics, from Turing machines to cryptography, from the anthropic principle to quantum computers, from discussions on the existence of free will to how time travel and black holes are related to computational problems. Only two caveats: some of the maths might look a bit intimidating for a layman, and most of the material is presented from the viewpoint of a person whose main interest is computational complexity theory: to quote from Scott himself: "In the field I come from, it's never our place to ask if some physical object exists or not, it's to assume it exists and see what computations we can do with it". If these two caveats did not discourage you (personally, I think they should have the opposite effect), get this book and prepare to enjoy every page of it!

The theoretical underpinnings of quantum computing are vitally important for even an introductory level understanding of the topic. Aaronson has an intuitive writing style, and introduces all the relevant background topics to the depth they are required to study this topic. Skipping classical physics and going straight to quantum was easier than expected. This book lays the ground work to understand practical applications in the field, while keeping it's focus on the operative question: What could we actually do with a quantum computer, why should we think it is possible, and how do we know they'll be fundamentally different from classical computers?

Good