Well, here's some mmmmore:
Browsing in a local bookstore I noticed the new edition of David Foster Wallace's 2003 "Everything and More" is now out. It has a newly-written Introduction, but otherwise, so far as I could tell, there were no changes/corrections to the text (???). Wallace died tragically at his own hands a couple years ago. Many mathematicians would not recommend this work, but if you're a lover of math and infinity, combined with wordplay (or what some call Wallace's "verbal pyrotechnics"), I think it a worthwhile, if eclectic, read (my previous mini-review HERE).
Wallace's volume was part of Norton's "Great Discoveries Series." Though not truly a math book, I'll just point out that another upcoming volume in that series will be a new biography of Richard Feynman from physicist Lawrence Krauss... ought to be good, keep an eye out.
Also worth noting that Stephen Wolfram has announced that his massive 2002 tome "A New Kind Of Science" is now available on the iPad:
http://tinyurl.com/33sjswd
Finally, what I did pick out (based solely on Martin Gardner's ringing endorsement on back cover) during my browse through the bookstore, was Brian Hayes' 2008 "Group Theory In the Bedroom, and Other Mathematical Diversions." Gardner wrote, "Every essay in this book is a gem of science writing at its highest level...Its scope is awesome... There isn't a dull page in the book." Into the reading queue it goes....
No comments:
Post a Comment