I am a math professor but still found things in this book that I didn't know and found a few ideas of interesting things to cover in a couple of my survey courses. ( )

Lots of cool photographs, but some of the explanations are risible.

Mathematics: an Illustrated History of Numbers is what it says it is. I somewhat realize that I say that a lot, but generally if you can judge a book by its cover that is considered a good thing; though only when it comes to books. So the book seems to be part of a series called Ponderables. I don’t think I have read any of the other books in the series, but I suppose it is worth pointing out. Since the book is Illustrated there are images and pictures that represent the ideas listed in the book.

The book is organized chronologically. It starts with the ideas of Learning to Count, Positional Notation, the Abacus, and so on. Each idea is treated to a paragraph or some other bit of coverage that demonstrates its importance. Some ideas get more coverage or a longer entry. Take the idea of the Pythagorean Theorem. Since it did not exactly originate from Pythagoras, one may wonder how it became named after him. According to the book, he was probably the first one to demonstrate a proof of it. Meanwhile, other entries might only be around half a page in length. This does not necessarily show that this entry is of less importance. Take the entry on the Rhind Papyrus. It is half a page in length, shows a picture of it, and talks about what it contains.

Further on in the book it eventually gets to The Renaissance and beyond. This book is pretty simplistic, but that doesn’t make it bad. It explains some things in a way that seems to skip over some information, but it is difficult to really go through it that much. ( )

Beautiful illustrations. Very factoid driven and superficial but a great simple overview. ( )