A complex package delivered in refreshingly simple and consistently entertaining terms.
According to one of the world’s most respected mathematicians, the games we play have made us who we are.
Du Sautoy, an Oxford academic and author of The Music of the Primes, Symmetry, How To Count to Infinity, and other acclaimed works, admits to a fascination with games. When he has travelled to attend conferences and meetings around the world, he has tried to find out how the locals amuse themselves. In his latest book, the author examines the mechanics and history of each game (he does not include sports) as well as the underlying math. “Tell me the game you play,” he writes, “and I’ll tell you who you are.” While he has great affection for rational, strategic games like chess, his main interest is games that require both skill and luck. The games that have endured are those with simple rules that give rise to near-infinite complexity. Some games, like backgammon and bridge, transcend national borders, while others, such as mancala (mostly in Africa) and truco (South America) are played mainly in their culture of origin. The author acknowledges that his list is somewhat arbitrary, but he thoroughly knows his subject, and he writes with self-effacing charm. He discusses the odds that apply to dice games, cards, and even roulette, although he emphasizes that the most that math study can give you is a slight edge, not an unbeatable advantage. In fact, many regular game players have an intuitive grasp of the odds, which leads du Sautoy to speculate that games played a crucial part in the brain development of early humans. “Both games and mathematics combine the creativity and imagination of the artist with the logic and practicality of the scientist,” he writes, adding that “we will keep on inventing new games”—a fitting conclusion to an engrossing tour.
A complex package delivered in refreshingly simple and consistently entertaining terms.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781541601284
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2023
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.
An experimental, illustrated essay collection that questions neurotypical definitions of what is normal.
From a young age, writer and comedian Myers has been different. In addition to coping with obsessive compulsive disorder and panic attacks, she struggled to read basic social cues. During a round of seven minutes in heaven—a game in which two players spend seven minutes in a closet and are expected to kiss—Myers misread the romantic advances of her best friend and longtime crush, Marley. In Paris, she accidentally invited a sex worker to join her friends for “board games and beer,” thinking he was simply a random stranger who happened to be hitting on her. In community college, a stranger’s request for a pen spiraled her into a panic attack but resulted in a tentative friendship. When the author moved to Australia, she began taking notes on her colleagues in an effort to know them better. As the author says to her co-worker, Tabitha, “there are unspoken social contracts within a workplace that—by some miracle—everyone else already understands, and I don’t….When things Go Without Saying, they Never Get Said, and sometimes people need you to Say Those Things So They Understand What The Hell Is Going On.” At its best, Myers’ prose is vulnerable and humorous, capturing characterization in small but consequential life moments, and her illustrations beautifully complement the text. Unfortunately, the author’s tendency toward unnecessary capitalization and experimental forms is often unsuccessful, breaking the book’s otherwise steady rhythm.
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063381308
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.
Avuncular observations on matters historical from the late popularizer of the past.
McCullough made a fine career of storytelling his way through past events and the great men (and occasional woman) of long-ago American history. In that regard, to say nothing of his eschewing modern technology in favor of the typewriter (“I love the way the bell rings every time I swing the carriage lever”), he might be thought of as belonging to a past age himself. In this set of occasional pieces, including various speeches and genial essays on what to read and how to write, he strikes a strong tone as an old-fashioned moralist: “Indifference to history isn’t just ignorant, it’s rude,” he thunders. “It’s a form of ingratitude.” There are some charming reminiscences in here. One concerns cajoling his way into a meeting with Arthur Schlesinger in order to pitch a speech to presidential candidate John F. Kennedy: Where Richard Nixon “has no character and no convictions,” he opined, Kennedy “is appealing to our best instincts.” McCullough allows that it wasn’t the strongest of ideas, but Schlesinger told him to write up a speech anyway, and when it got to Kennedy, “he gave a speech in which there was one paragraph that had once sentence written by me.” Some of McCullough’s appreciations here are of writers who are not much read these days, such as Herman Wouk and Paul Horgan; a long piece concerns a president who’s been largely lost in the shuffle too, Harry Truman, whose decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan McCullough defends. At his best here, McCullough uses history as a way to orient thinking about the present, and with luck to good ends: “I am a short-range pessimist and a long-range optimist. I sincerely believe that we may be on the way to a very different and far better time.”
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781668098998
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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