I accidentally nuked a long and more literary review of the book before posting it, which, I suppose attests to my intelligence, or lack thereof. This is an abridged second try.

I was excited to come across the autobiography of an eminent scientist who had to struggle as a visible minority, and who has such a keen interest in science policy. Yet, in the end, I found the book to be a disappointment.

For one, it is full of small but very distracting grammatical errors, literally every few pages. These are not spelling mistakes (mostly), but the kind of errors that creep in due to cutting and pasting, and careless editing. I suppose some blame should be laid on the editor, i.e. Mary Washington.

Another difficulty with the book for me had to do with its organization. I found that while it tried to be chronological, it still did a large amount of jumping around not only in space and time, but also in ideas and concepts. It felt a lot like the author was coming up with things to write about by free association, without an effort to go back and regroup things. Often, I had to remind myself of the title of the chapter that I was reading, and to try to understand if and how the present section "made sense."

Finally, the ultimate failure of this book is in that it reads like some monster of an unabridged resume. Just like a resume only outlines the silhouette of a man, so it was that Dr. Washington's "Odyssey" did not bring him alive for me. I certainly understood that he is accomplished like few other people in his field, but the book did not read like a story. It delivered on its promise of "how Washington became a scientist and his insights into science policy" but it did not inspire me to follow in his footsteps.

One final (technical) note: There have been three other individuals who received the Nobel Prize twice in their lives, besides Linus Pauling: Frederick Sanger, John Bardeen, and Marie Curie née Sklodowska. Perhaps the author means the only person to win two Nobel Prizes individually and not as part of a team?