Jonathan Beckman
Eucliding Me?
Alex's Adventures in Numberland: Dispatches from the Wonderful World of Mathematics
By Alex Bellos
Bloomsbury 448pp £18.99
There are undoubtedly physicists who write novels and biochemists who philosophise but I don't know any arty types who spend their evenings curled up with some critically acclaimed number theory or multidimensional calculus. Unless you choose to study a maths-related discipline at university, then the subject – bar some frantic mental arithmetic at the supermarket till – is pretty much dead to you. This sparky new book demonstrates quite how much we're missing.
Maths has the remarkable capacity to give birth to wonder: the pleasurable incredulity that occurs when the mind's conceptual limits are breached by the compulsion of logical proof. But, as Alex Bellos discovers as he jaunts around the globe meeting child abacus prodigies in Japan and celebrity numerologists,
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
London's East End was long synonymous with poverty and sweatshops, while its West End was associated with glamour and high society. But when it came to the fashion industry, were the differences really so profound?
Sharman Kadish - Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers
Sharman Kadish: Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers - Fashion City: How Jewish Londoners Shaped Global Style; Fashion City: ...
literaryreview.co.uk
In 1982, Donald Rumsfeld presented Saddam Hussein with a pair of golden spurs. Two decades later he was dropping bunker-busting bombs on his palaces.
Where did the US-Iraqi relationship go wrong?
Rory Mccarthy - The Case of the Vanishing Missiles
Rory Mccarthy: The Case of the Vanishing Missiles - The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the United States and the ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Barbara Comyns was a dog breeder, a house painter, a piano restorer, a landlady... And a novelist.
@nclarke14 on the lengths 20th-century women writers had to go to make ends meet:
Norma Clarke - Her Family & Other Animals
Norma Clarke: Her Family & Other Animals - Barbara Comyns: A Savage Innocence by Avril Horner
literaryreview.co.uk