Like Entangled Life, it took me a while to finish this because it encompasses so many different fields that I’d stop all the time to check references. This is not a criticism of the book, though: James Gleick describes how scientists in areas as disparate as meteorology and the study of cardiac arrhythmia were able to make an impact by showing simple chaotic models that reproduce features of very real systems which were previously thought to be too random to understand. I find that pretty amazing.

While I’d have preferred a slightly more technical book, I’ve found that Gleick is really good at making layman explanations without being condescending. He also interviewed a lot of people and out of it he made a really compelling story of how the field developed. I particularly liked how he highlights the massive resistance the first people who studied chaos encountered. Nonlinear systems have historically been (and still are to this day) something of a footnote because analytic treatment of them is impossible, which makes theoretical scientists unenthusiastic. And the more practical scientists are also unlikely to be receptive because incorporating a dynamic systems approach to their study requires interdisciplinary work.