Ordering lives Book

I was really excited to read this book and I started off with the first section which presented surreal numbers. I even broke out the pen and paper to follow along. Unfortunately, I was lost amid the imprecise descriptions and possible errors.

Fortunately, the author had written earlier that the second part was readable without the first, and since my interest was in the applicability of surreal numbers to games, I tried that.

Unfortunately, that too did not work. The author seemed to make mistakes in his dominoes example and at no point did I feel any relevance for surreal numbers to games.

I skimmed a bit more before finally giving up.

It's a shame. I really wanted to like this book, and the subject matter might be as good as others say, but the presentation was just poor. Perhaps a solid proofing and beefing up the anemic sections might make this worthwhile.

For now, it's a poor introduction to a tantalizing subject.