A review of an AI book on Goodreads (not me, not mine):
Heh, I opened this up to find the ISBN and found dried blood all over the pages, suggesting I read this during my cocaine-intensive period back in 1999-2000. That's fitting, since cocaine and the study of artificial intelligence seem to enjoy several similarities -- incredible expense as a barrier to entry, exciting short-term effects (see: euphoria, A* search) but letdowns upon prolonged use (see: addiction, combinatorial explosions), and they've both ruined plenty of fine careers in computer science. We used this book for CS4600, but I only got halfway though that semester and remember little of it (see: careers in computer science, aforementioned negative effects of cocaine on). I went back and read most of this in 2003, and found solid coverage of most everything useful I'm aware of from AI.