by David Berlinski ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 12, 2011
Philosopher and math populizer Berlinski (The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions, 2008, etc.) takes on the challenge of explaining the logical foundation of the elementary operations of arithmetic.
It’s no easy task. Indeed, it was not until the late 19th century that mathematicians were inspired to develop the axioms (unproven assumptions) enabling the development of theorems to prove the legitimacy of all those rules of thumb you learned in high school—e.g., that the product of two negative numbers is positive, or to divide fractions you invert the divisor and multiply. Along the way, mathematicians developed set theory, which showed that the operations possible with numbers could be generalized to define arcane structures called rings or fields. Why bother, Berlinski writes in the introduction, noting that most people dislike math. However, he continues, the reason is because such work has the grandeur of the absolute, of something deep in the human imagination. So readers with an open mind to, say, Peano’s five axioms for the natural numbers, may be putty in the hands of Berlinski. The author examines the world of integers, embracing positive and negative numbers, and then fractions, and he introduces many of the hallowed names of 20th-century mathematicians and logicians with charming asides and literary references. The author also explains the various laws of associativity and commutativity that the numbers obey, as well as the value of proof by induction and how it derives from Peano’s fifth axiom. “New math” for adults this is not. Rather, Berlinski delivers a tour de force by a mathematician who wants the intellectually curious and logically minded student to understand the foundations and beauty of one of the major branches of mathematics.
Pub Date: May 12, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-375-42333-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2011
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by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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developed by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno
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by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno
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by Charlayne Hunter-Gault ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1992
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
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