This book takes a rather difficult topic, “algorithmic complexity”, and explains it in a way that any reader with a bit of curiosity towards algorithmic world can understand most of its contents. This is actually not a book in the traditional sense of it. ETH Zurich offered a public lecture series called, “ The Open Class – Seven Wonders of Informatics” in the fall of 2005 and this book has been written based on those lecture series.

I firmly believe that when you are trying to learn something, it is always “easy come, easy go”. It is also applicable to other aspects like love, friendship etc. A friend who seems to come in to your life effortlessly also fades out of your life quickly. So, is the case with love, I guess. This book is total crap. The author gives a sermon on how to learn things in the first twenty hours.

The cover page of the book gives the solution to the popular puzzle, Is it possible for a knight to tour the chessboard, visiting every square once and only once, and return to its initial square? The solution to the puzzle lies in thinking about a graph containing vertices as squares of the chess board and the adjacency of two vertices based on the validity of a knight move.

Part I - Fundamentals The first part of the book creates the necessary background for the reader to understand the various algorithms discussed in the book. The book implements all the algorithms in Java. Its not a problem if you are rusty with Java. The authors give some basic crash course on the language, just enough to understand all the algorithms. I have forgotten Java long back. I think it has been a decade since I have coded any Java program.

“Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, but only saps today of its strength.” - A.J. Cronin