A conversation about the widespread rejection of maths by almost everyone we know set me to thinking about what makes it accessible and I started listing books that took a fresh and entertaining approach to the subject.
To begin with with two novels:
A most beautiful novel about the search for mathematical truth (in a world undermined by Godel’s proof) is Uncle Petros and Goldbach’s Conjecture by Apostolos Doxiadis and who could fail to enjoy Robert Coover’s Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. about a sad little accountant who gives his evenings over to simulating baseball games with pen and paper. Maybe not quite maths, but definitely an insight into the number-lover.
The next two recommendations, closer to real maths, and marred a little but not too much by rather flowery language, are:
A Tour of the Calculus and The Advent of the Algorithm both by David Berlinski. Long on mathematical culture and history and short on formulae.
Imagining Numbers by Barry Mazur explains the square root of -1 to anybody in a charming and poetic way.
Surreal Numbers by Donald E. Knuth is interesting and original for the way it walks through the invention of a number system, in this case John Conway’s surreals, using the classic device of the dialogue. The conversation can be occasionally cringeworthy, but this short book provides hours of intellectual stimulation.
However, if I could take only one book to the proverbial desert island, it would have to be Godel, Escher, Bach: an eternal golden braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter. We can argue over whether it’s a maths book – it defies classification – but I can’t imagine a wannabee mathematician who wouldn’t adore it.
