Alex's Adventures in Numberland: Dispatches from the Wonderful World of Mathematics

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I am not comfortable with maths beyond the basics (O'level 25 years ago) but I bought this book for my husband who loves maths and he loved this book. They have no need to count lots of things and, indeed, see counting endlessly as a ludicrous activity. Alex Bellos attempts to engage the general public in mathematics by describing maths in a way that anyone can understand. Photograph: Wong Maye-E/AP Mathematics has revealed the underlying structures of nature, such as the golden ratio that defines the shape of a nautilus's shell.

Alex explains the surprising geometry of the 50p piece, and the strategy of how best to gamble it in a casino. Moreover, his goal is not to instruct, any more than the goal of THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS is a manual on chess-playing.But I'm happy to say that this rare foray into the realm of written reality scored on both fronts: (1) it reported pretty much indisputably factual information with only the odd conjecturable opinion; and (2) it was very well written. Their lines tended to compress the distances between higher numbers — a logarithmic as opposed to linear depiction. Bellos has traveled all around the globe and has plunged into history to uncover fascinating stories of mathematical achievement, from the breakthroughs of Euclid, the greatest mathematician of all time, to the creations of the Zen master of origami, one of the hottest areas of mathematical work today.

Packed with fascinating, eye-opening anecdotes, Alex's Adventures in Numberland is an exhilarating cocktail of history, reportage and mathematical proofs that will leave you awestruck.His overriding theme is that preconceptions shaped by culture and biological hard-wiring are unconsciously embedded in our thinking. Concerning "the golden ratio," Bellos notes, "It may sound Orwellian, but some irrational numbers are more irrational than others. Bellos proceeds with a revelatory anecdote illustrating our own socialized mania for quantification.