Rating: 
Summary: A good source book on Pi
Review: Ugh! Avoid this book like diseased shellfish! Never before have I encountered a more paranoid, chauvinistic, egotistical author. Forget learning anything about Pi. There is nothing in this book that you can't find on a goggle search *and you won't have to sit through at least 50 pages of unrelated, uninteresting garbage* There was plenty of opportunity for the author to discuss related (and for that matter unrelated) historical events concerning mathematics. Instead, you read at least 20-30 pages of Western Culture Bashing. Please, for the sake of all that is right in this world, don't buy this book and destroy every copy you run into at B and N!
Rating: 
Summary: Enjoyable but not reliable
Review: While this "history of Pi" presents a satisfactory accounting of the history of mathematics in a fairly enjoyable way, the author's tangents must relegate it to the b-string of math-oriented popular books. While I didn't find the lack of detailed proofs problematic, the compromise he attempts to find between proof-heavy math book and light popular book results in a rather schizophrenic treatment of some very interesting and relevant topics (such as continued fractions). He fails, too, to pursue the implications those useless digits of Pi have for our understanding of the universe, though perhaps when the book was written these implications weren't quite so obvious.Many have described the opinion-heavy style of Dr. Beckmann; I only wish to add that his opinions are handed out in the classical Objectivist style. That is, they're in a tone meant to make the reader feel complicit in their sentiment and far above any reproach they might be dealing. For example, his complaints about the fledgling environmental movement neglect any facts and refer to activists as "frustrated housewives on messianic trips." This sort of dismissal out-of-hand is used on Aristotle, on the Romans, on the Soviets -- all based on few factual examples. While I *agree* with him on the great flaws of Aristotle (at least as a scientist and mathematician), on the Romans (though he apparently regards George Bernard Shaw's "Caesar and Cleopatra" as historically accurate enough from which to quote Julius Caesar), and on the Soviets (though Oppenheimer and Turing didn't get much fair treatment on "our" side of the Iron Curtain), I find this treatment distracting. He has other tricks to make the reader feel "smart" -- the epigraph for chapter 9 is the ever-popular "eppur si muove", but instead of citing it to Galileo, as is commonly done, he gives it to Giordano Bruno as a dying cry. While he acknowledges in the footnotes that there's not a single good reason to attribute it to Bruno, it's still the sort of gambit an author employs to send his reader quoting this new correction of popular fact to everyone he meets, feeling smugly superior. I recommend the book, especially if you can get it inexpensively (it's terribly short). If ever you find yourself feeling superior when reading it, though, realize that you've fallen prey to Dr. Beckmann's little trap.
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