"How could you, a mathematician, believe that extraterrestrials were sending you messages?" the visitor from Harvard asked the West Virginian with the movie-star looks and Olympian manner.

Thus begins the true story of John Nash, the mathematical genius who was a legend by age thirty when he slipped into madness, and who -- thanks to the selflessness fo a beautiful woman and the loyalty of the mathematics community -- emerged after decades of ghostlike exixstence to win a Nobel Prize and world acclaim, the inspiration for a major motion picutre. Sylvia Nasar's award-winning biography is a drama about the mystery of the human mind, triumph over incredivble adversity, and the healing power of love.