Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity

Great book

This book is well written in a conversational tone that makes you feel like you're sitting down, talking with the author. The level of detail was just right -- enough to appreciate the complexities of the problems with enough proofs to make you understand without going overboard. (And, where appropriate, just sketches without formality) I also really like how the author traced the history of math through the greeks and into modern math, showing deep connections between Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle, and how they influenced (and continue to influence) math today. Many topics from school came back and seemed much more alive as the metaphysical impact was explained. If you survived college calculus and still retain some basic understanding of it, then you probably won't struggle to get through this book. If you stopped after high school math then you'll struggle. I'm a computer scientist by trade, and I found many interesting connections between computability, decidability, complexity theory, recursion, induction, countable vs. uncountable, etc. It was a great way to further my education in my spare time. The only thing that drove me nuts is the author's chapter/section writing style. Why can't he just use normal chapters like the rest of the world? ...And a table of contents. If he had been a little more conventional then it would have been perfect. Read more