Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth
Doxiadis, Apostolos et al. Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth (New York: Bloomsbury, 2009)
The writers (Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos Papadimitriou) and artists (Alecos Papadatos and Annie Di Donna) of Logicomix (website, Wikipedia) have done something amazing: they have created an engaging graphic novel--and Logicomix is a novel, not merely a biography of its protagonist Bertrand Russell--about set theory, logic, mathematics, and philosophy.
Amid their breaking-the-fourth-wall explanatory digressions, the authors and artists focus on Russell, Alfred North Whitehead, and the two logicians' three-volume Principia Mathematica, which famously took nearly 400 pages of arcane symbology to prove that one plus one equals two. (Is it any wonder that madness is a recurrent leitmotif?)
Along the way, various mathematical and logical luminaries (Gottlob Frege, Georg Cantor, Henri Poincaré, and David Hilbert) make appearances in Logicomix and others such as Ludwig Wittgenstein and Kurt Gödel are featured more extensively within the flow of Russell's life. The main framing device is a university lecture on "The Role of Logic in Human Affairs" delivered by Russell--a pacifist who had been previously jailed for his anti-war stance--on the eve of World War II.
The review by Dan Kois at the Washington Post ("Big ideas, bright colors") calls the book "an engaging, energetic work that makes big ideas accessible without dumbing them down," and Alex Bellos calls it "both a thrilling adventure and a serious history of the philosophy of mathematics" in his review "Mathematics has never been so exciting" at The Guardian; I cannot disagree with either assessment. The authors discuss much of significance here, even linking the tale to Aeschylus' Oresteia, and they do so with just enough dramatic license to capture the reader's attention. See this early encounter between a young Russell and his math professor for one example:
For a further taste of the creative team's style, check out their pieces for Financial Times and Publisher's Weekly; Logicomix is highly recommended, and I look forward to their next creative project.
links:
Jim Holt's "Algorithm and Blues" (NYT) is another good review.
For more on Russell's quest, see his page in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy's explication of Russell's Paradox.