Stewart’s imaginative, often-witty anecdotes, analogies and diagrams succeed in illuminating many but not all of some very...
An aggressively unsimplified account of 14 great problems, emphasizing how mathematicians approached but did not always solve them.
Fermat’s Last Theorem, 350 years old and solved by Andrew Wiles in 1995, produced headlines because laymen were amazed that mathematicians could make new discoveries. In fact, mathematics is as creative as physics, writes prolific popularizer Stewart (Mathematics Emeritus/Univ. of Warwick; The Mathematics of Life, 2011): “Mathematics is newer, and more diverse, than most of us imagine.” Goldbach’s Conjecture—that every even number can be written as the sum of two prime numbers (250 years old, probably true but not proven)—provides the background for a chapter on the unruly field of prime numbers: those divisible only by one and itself (3, 5, 7, 11, 13…). Squaring the Circle—constructing a square with an area identical to a given circle (2,500 years old; proven impossible)—introduces pi. Schoolchildren learn that pi is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, but it’s a deeply important number that turns up everywhere in mathematics. Most readers know that Newton’s laws precisely predict motions of two bodies, but few know that they flop with three. The Three-body Problem (330 years old, unsolved) continues to worry astronomers since it hints that gravitational forces among three or more bodies may be unstable, so the planets may eventually fly off.
Stewart’s imaginative, often-witty anecdotes, analogies and diagrams succeed in illuminating many but not all of some very difficult ideas. It will enchant math enthusiasts as well as general readers who pay close attention.Pub Date: March 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-465-02240-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2013
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
