Category Archives: Book of the Month

January’s Book of the Month is Mathematics for the Million: How to Master the Magic of Numbers by Lancelot Hogben. First published in 1936 and reprinted many times. From the Prologue: “The customary way of writing a book about mathematics … Continue reading →

December’s Book of the Month is Historical Topics for the Mathematics Classroom by J.K. Baumgart, D.E. Deal, B.R. Vogeli, A.E. Hallerberg, eds., published by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. This book has a summary of the history of … Continue reading →

November’s Book of the Month is Geometry and the Imagination by Hilbert and Cohn-Vossen. First published in 1952. The AMS website says: “This remarkable book has endured as a true masterpiece of mathematical exposition. … The book is overflowing with … Continue reading →

April’s Book of the Month is Proofs From The Book by Martin Aigner and Günter Zeigler. (The first edition came out in 1998 — note the new editions) From the preface to the first edition. Paul Erdös liked to talk … Continue reading →

December’s Book of the Month is Mathematician’s Delight by W. W. Sawyer, Dover Publications 2007 (originally Penguin Books, 1943). This is Sawyer’s first book, and was written with the aim “to dispel the fear of mathematics.” According to the W. … Continue reading →

November’s Book of the Month is Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter (Basic Books, 1979). This book is about symmetry, self-reference, and other fundamental mathematical ideas explored through the works of the three people named … Continue reading →

October’s Book of the Month is Cuentos Con Cuentas by Miguel de Guzman (Labor, Barcelona, 1984). This is also published in English under the title The Countingbury Tales, translated by Jody Doran and published by World Scientific (2000). Have a … Continue reading →

September’s featured book of the month is “Mathematical Models” by H.M. Cundy and A.P. Rolett. This classic was first published in 1952 by Oxford University Press, but was republished in paperback by Tarquin in 1981. As well as nets polyhedra, … Continue reading →

August’s featured book of the month is “Indra’s Pearls: The Vision of Felix Klein” by David Mumford, Caroline Series and David Wright. Wikipedia says: “The book explores the patterns created by iterating conformal maps of the complex plane called Möbius transformations, and their connections with symmetry and self-similarity. The … Continue reading →