For the budding mathematician in the house, to say nothing of lovers of puzzles and enigmas.
An abstract if oddly entertaining foray into the more philosophical realms of mathematics.
A noted popularizer of mathematics, Cheng, the author of Beyond Infinity and How To Bake Pi, works at the frontiers of the discipline in an arcane area “called category theory,” which “doesn’t involve numbers and equations at all.” If the thought of math without numbers makes your head hurt, the author’s latest book will be a constant challenge. Math is real, she tells us, in much the same way that Santa Claus is real: as an idea. Thus, as she puts it, it’s entirely possible that another idea can come into play, namely that 1 + 1 does not equal 2; the question then becomes not “What is 1” or “What is 2,” but instead, “What is a world in which 1 + 1 = 2?” Given that math, in concert with physics, admits the possibility of an infinite number of worlds, or dimensions, a world where 1 + 1 = 1 isn’t out of the question. Our world gives the answer of 2 because that’s the abstraction we agree on, just as we agree (for the most part) on the laws of logic—and that’s a key idea, for, as Cheng says brightly, “Mathematics is the logical study of how logical things work.” The strict rules of logic can, of course, make a person’s head hurt, too; one has only to think of Zeno’s paradox, wherein neither the tortoise nor the hare actually wins a race because “the sum doesn’t converge.” Some of the author’s examples take the form of equations, and while it helps to be numerate, the numerophobic shouldn’t shy away from digging in. Despite her provocative title, others are fun examples from the very real world, such as using a recipe for mayonnaise to discuss the process of commutativity.
For the budding mathematician in the house, to say nothing of lovers of puzzles and enigmas.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2023
ISBN: 9781541601826
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.
Memories and life lessons inspired by the author’s mother, who was murdered in 2021.
“Neither my mother nor I knew that her last text to me would be the words ‘Think you’ll be happy,’ ” Avant writes, "but it is fitting that she left me with a mantra for resiliency.” The author, a filmmaker and former U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas, begins her first book on the night she learned her mother, Jacqueline Avant, had been fatally shot during a home invasion. “One of my first thoughts,” she writes, “was, ‘Oh God, please don’t let me hate this man. Give me the strength not to hate him.’ ” Daughter of Clarence Avant, known as the “Black Godfather” due to his work as a pioneering music executive, the author describes growing up “in a house that had a revolving door of famous people,” from Ella Fitzgerald to Muhammad Ali. “I don’t take for granted anything I have achieved in my life as a Black American woman,” writes Avant. “And I recognize my unique upbringing…..I was taught to honor our past and pay forward our fruits.” The book, which is occasionally repetitive, includes tributes to her mother from figures like Oprah Winfrey and Bill Clinton, but the narrative core is the author’s direct, faith-based, unwaveringly positive messages to readers—e.g., “I don’t want to carry the sadness and anger I have toward the man who did this to my mother…so I’m worshiping God amid the worst storm imaginable”; "Success and feeling good are contagious. I’m all about positive contagious vibrations!” Avant frequently quotes Bible verses, and the bulk of the text reflects the spirit of her daily prayer “that everything is in divine order.” Imploring readers to practice proactive behavior, she writes, “We have to always find the blessing, to be the blessing.”
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9780063304413
Page Count: 288
Publisher: HarperOne
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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