Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful Journey Through The Greatest Of Arts
Review: William Dunham has exercised wonderful judgement in a book this thin, making sure that maths, history, biography, and personalities appear in good measure.There is one chapter for each letter of the alphabet ranging through Arithmetic, Knighted Newton, Mathematical Personality, and culminating in Z ( a chapter on complex or "imaginary" numbers). Even a chapter titled "Where are the women?"! Also, see the chapter on Bertrand Rusell. It will hardly take you an hour or two to read a chapter and you can read almost at random You need not be intimidated if you do not want to delve deeply into maths. The author has provided just about enough mathematical material in terms of proofs, calculations, diagrams (interspersed with wry humour) The material is not too dense even for the non-technical reader, though you must of course, have the patience to follow a train of thought to its conclusion. Personally, it represented a return to the wonderful world of maths after a long hiatus, after explorations of such formal (Hall & Knight, SL Loney) and informal (George Gamow, Douglas Hofstafdter, Roger Penrose) scientific writing in my student days. Some of the pardonable omissions are: 1) I would have liked to see full length chapters on some of my personal favorites such as Gauss, Cauchy, and Hilbert 2) On the utility of prime numbers and number theory, the author seems to have missed out on applications in cryptography The editing and presentation is excellent. The book is very affordable. Buy two copies, one for your bookshelf, and one for your nephew (niece!)- the budding math prodigy in your family
Rating: 
Summary: Review by a mathematics professor
Review: William Dunham's work is of the highest caliber. He not only knows the techniques of writing and making the best use of language but he also knows the math without question. The book is extremely well-organized with a reasonable number of math examples but not so many as to "clog" the flow of the writing and the stories about the discoverers of the great math sequences. This book is, I think, very much worth the price being asked. Very enjoyable reading and one can even use it for study if necessary, such as when writing a thesis.
| 
