Someone like Claude Shannon presents a real challenge to all biographers. For he was important enough to the world of mathematics, communications, computer science and engineering to deserve a biography but has led a quiet and private life to make the job of documenting his life quite difficult. Luckily in his older age he let his eccentricities loose and provided us with quite a number of amusing anecdotes. Even with this challenge the author managed to write a good biography, but it felt a bit padded at places (mostly in the first half of the book).

Now, if you really want to feel a little bit like Claude Shannon, go ahead and solve a few math puzzles just for the sheer joy of it and than proceed to make your own pointless machine (yes it's really called that and he invented it too).