Product Description

Customer Reviews (2)

Neal is a Genius
Read all his books, he is the most original American fiction writer going around, buy it!!

It's in SPANISH!
It has been a couple of years since reading Cryptonomicon. When I was looking for more Stephenson books I came across Criptonomicon II and III. I assumed they were continuations of his first Crypto book. You have to read down in the details of the Amazon book description to find that these two books are just a Spanish translation of Cryptonomicon.

Hope this saves you a restocking fee. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Oh my gosh That is my Life
That's what I kept thinking when I read The Big U in 2001 about half way through my undergraduate college experience. I connected so much with the setting (a giant university with bureaucracy and paperwork and 20 story dorms and little subcultures that become resident's realities) and the characters. This could be about any giant university now.

The story follows the lives of 3 students at Megauniversity: Casimir Radon, the 30 year old junior who saved up for college imagining something very different than he finds, Sarah, a Senior student, and Ephraim Klein, a philosophy major. The story is narrated sometimes in the third person and sometimes first person by an assistant professor who lives in the dorms in a sort of RA position and has a better understanding of the way the Big U works than most. The Big U follows these characters month by month through one school year in college - September to May. The story is really about the University but the characters give it context.

In September each encounters problems with bureaucracy. Sarah has been assigned to live in the foreign non-English speaking maintenance staff's lounge and can't be reassigned to another dorm room without signatures of professors for classes that she can't yet register for due to a holdup with that paperwork. Ephraim has a jock roommate who he hates and has other problems in that he is a philosophy major. Cassimir has finished his first two years of physics at a community college, but can't transfer the credits because he didn't take physics with an emphasis on socioeconomics.

After experiencing college this is so realistic. (I spent my senior year taking sociology classes as part of a general graduation requirement and took my first 1000 level class my last semester.)

As the story progresses to March things fall apart within the student body as well. The frats can't distinguish fantasy from reality. The Dungeons and Dragons crowd have the same problem. Pranks get bigger and bigger until the campus is a war zone literally. The plot sounds bad and this is probably why people gave the book bad reviews, but getting there is fun and it comes across as plausible.

For Stephenson fans The Big U may be disappointing. It lacks the digressions into technology that he is so fond of. Instead the book can be viewed as a series of short daydreams in the form of pranks played by the students: a golf cart is retooled by engineering majors into a miniature tank - all the toilets in an umpteen story dorm building are flushed at once - things people plan and speculate on but no one ever gets around to doing.

So maybe from this review the book sounds bad. It sounds that way, but it is not. This is one of the best books ever. I bought it and loaned it to fellow students whenever possible.

If you are currently attending a Big University or have graduated, then buy or borrow this book as soon as possible. If you went to a sane college, or didn't go at all then don't bother. This book parallels life so well its scary. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Wrong edition
The book arrived not very long after I ordered it, even through international mail, but I was disappointed when it arrived because it turned out to be the third edition when I needed the fifth edition (fourth ed. might have been okay).The book's description failed to mention that. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (1)

Criptonomicon I: El codigo Enigma
It's a wonderfull book. It's very appealing for readers used to IT isues.
The story presents a powerfull description of the corporative world and the different ways the IT experts fits (or not) into it.
I endorse it enfatically to readers with math expertise. ... Read more