A smorgasbord for math fans of all abilities.
An expansive overview of numbers and figures, and those who find them irresistible.
Though he has an Oxford degree in math, former Guardian reporter Bellos (Futebol: Soccer: The Brazilian Way, 2002) approaches the subject as an enthusiastic amateur. He begins at the most basic level, with the concept of number itself, looking at the ways children, tribal cultures and animals deal with the idea of quantity. Perhaps not surprisingly, an ability to recognize which of two trees bears the most fruit seems to predate the ability to count. Cultural differences appear even in mathematically advanced societies, and the conventional system of base ten math is only one of several ways to break up the number system, with binary math probably the best known alternative. For arithmetic, Bellos looks at Japanese abacus experts, who can add columns of numbers faster than a calculator, and the Vedic math promoted by an Indian sect, which offers advanced algorithms for multiplication and other troublesome operations. Geometry also provides plenty of material, from the Pythagorean theorem to origami to the “golden ratio” beloved by architects and artists. A chapter on logarithms leads to a discussion of slide rules, the first choice for scientists and technicians requiring a quick answer until the pocket calculator drove it out of favor. Another chapter provides a lucid discussion of statistics and the famous bell curve. Recreational math gets its due, as well, with nods to Sudoku, Rubik’s Cube and the master puzzler Martin Gardner. The final chapter examines infinities and non-Euclidean geometry. Bellos maintains focus on the people who have created math and who have used it creatively, from the famous Greeks to Renaissance figures like Descartes and Fermat, and 19th-century giants like Gauss and Poincaré. Readers desiring more will find online appendices that treat the concepts more rigorously, with proofs where relevant. However, most readers who remember high-school math can follow the clear and entertaining accounts.
A smorgasbord for math fans of all abilities.Pub Date: June 15, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4165-8825-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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