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Title: Technical and Thorough at the Expense of Readability
Review: This book, while generally pretty complete, seems to have trouble explaining the concepts in anything other than formal definitions and the few "user friendly" explanations that is does give leave quite a bit to be desired. This book would make a great reference for anyone already familiar with the concepts of computability but does little to accommodate readers that are new to the subject. There are some pretty good step by step explanations of more basic subjects like non-deterministic finite automata but the explanations that are given for more complicated topics are very flaky. Take the pumping lemma for example. The book gives a very brief overview, a more formal definition, and then (prematurely) jumps into examples. One key concept, "pumping length," is described simply as "a certain special value." Its meaning is vaguely hinted at on the next page but is never actually stated - formally or in plain English.
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