
Ian Stewart's top popular mathematics books (2012) - ColinWright
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/jan/18/ian-stewart-top-10-popular-mathematics
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AnthonBerg
I ... I don't know about the kind of book mentioned in the article. Maybe
they're nice.

I honestly wish someone had just dropped the Princeton Companion to
Mathematics in my lap a decade or two ago:
[https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691118802/th...](https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691118802/the-
princeton-companion-to-mathematics)

It's beautifully written. The words jump off the page.

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indigochill
Am I wrong in understanding it's something like a math encyclopedia? The
concept from the description sounds interesting, but I wonder if someone who
only sort of made it through Calc 1 (but with a casual interest in going
further) would get enough out of it to justify the price tag.

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AnthonBerg
It's a lot less like an encyclopedia than I thought it would be! It's maths,
but in the form of an exposition as close to prose as possible. To be honest I
got goosebumps reading it.

I found it worth the price.

I'm fairly certain it would be worth anyone's time to find a copy in a library
to take a look at.

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mcguire
_The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy_ by Isaac Newton is not a
popular mathematics book, in the sense of the rest of the list.

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yesenadam
"There ought to be a great classic in this top 10, and there is none greater.
I've put it last because it's not popularisation in the strict sense."

~~~
mcguire
The others are good to read. This is good to have on a shelf to impress
whoever you know who would be impressed by that sort of thing. Or at least
expose them, so you have have them suitably removed from the premises.

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rramadass
People interested in studying the _Principia_ might find the following useful:

 _Newton 's Principia for the Common Reader_ by S. Chandrashekhar (nobel prize
winning astrophysicist)

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gooseus
Just finished Joy of X and Infinite Powers by Steven Strogatz and both are
excellent popular mathematics books that don't appear on this list (both
published after this article was).

