In this powerful and dramatic biography, Sylvia Nasar vividly re-creates the life of a mathematical genius whose career was cut short by schizophrenia and who, after three decades of devastating mental illness, miraculously recovered and was honored with a Nobel Prize. A Beautiful Mind traces the meteoric rise of John Forbes Nash, Jr., a prodigy and legend by the age of thirty, who dazzled the mathematical world by solving a series of deep problems deemed "impossible" by other mathematicians.

But at the height of his fame, Nash suffered a catastrophic mental breakdown and began a harrowing descent into insanity, resigning his post at MIT, slipping into a series of bizarre delusions, and eventually becoming a dreamy, ghostlike figure at Princeton, scrawling numerological messages on blackboards. He was all but forgotten by the outside world-until, remarkably, he emerged from his madness to win world acclaim. A feat of biographical writing, A Beautiful Mind is also a fascinating look at the extraordinary and fragile nature of genius.

SYLVIA NASAR is an eocnomics correspondent for The New York Times and lives in Tarrytown, New York.