Rating: 
Summary: If Not Satisfied with Pi Try e
Review: This writer had written three books, as far as I know, the one before you, "Trigonometric Delights" and "To Infinity and Beyond." If this does not convince you to read this book, then nothing will.I read this after Dr Beckmann's "A History of Pi," and found it to be the right choice. (for a review of that book click on the blue "a_mathematician" above to see it in its proper place). As Pi is closely associated with the circle, then so is e associated to logarithms and differential equations. It is even called the natural base! Maor does an excellent job in accounting the historical points about e. In the beginning of the book we see e associated with the logarithms and then we see its characterization as the limit of some sequence of numbers. Then we go into some summary of the origin of calculus to see that the exponential function with base e is its own derivative. If you find all this difficult to grasp right now, do not worry, because it is explained in the book in simple language. The book then goes into spirals, and then to hyperbolic trig functions which are defined in terms of the exponential functions base e, and the book is concluded with the Euler's equation, the equation containing the four most important numbers in mathematics: Pi, e, 1, and zero. I can't emphasize this enough, but the language of the book is understandable by anyone. Maybe you would be convinced if I tell you that my native language is not English, yet I could understand the insights of the writer. If you liked the book try a better one, Singh's "Fermat's Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem." (For a review please click on the blue a_mathematician above)
Rating: 
Summary: Best Story of Classical Math
Review: What a masterpiece! Eli Maor has written a wonderful story of classical math, while mostly centered around logarithms and natural base e, he has also taken us through much of the other essential classical math developments that touched upon this topic such as calculus, limits and analytic geometry. One can easily sense the author's enthusiasm for the subject and it is contagious. He has squeezed an amazing number of facts, personalities, history into a modest number of pages and whatever was left over, and there was plenty, he has expanded on them in little abstracts and appendixes. The path he takes us through is nothing less than a biography of our intellectual development. It is so interesting to see that some of the very basic math concepts that takes no more than a page in a standard textbook today, had to come into being through such tortuous ways. One also cant help but admire the pioneers such as Euler, Gauss and Descartes, their immense genius and their creativity and vision so many centuries ago. Eli puts all these into perspective. Writing and delivery are excellent. While the whole book reads like an exciting novel, many chapters can be read by themselves and stand on their own too. There is also plenty of math and derivations. Highly recommended.
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