BookReviews

Is reading Herb Simon's delightful autobiography worth boarding the wrong commuter train? Written in an informal style, Models of My Life presents a lively and insightful self-portrait of this father of AI. In keeping with his character, Simon uses the metaphor of the maze to describe his life: "In describing my life as mazelike, I do not mean that I have made a large number of deliberate, wrenching decisions to go off in one direction or another. On the contrary, I have made very few. Obvious responses to opportunities and circumstances, rather than studied decisions, have put me on the particular roads I have followed" (pp.