Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension: A Mathematician's Journey Through Narcissistic Numbers, Optimal Dating Algorithms, at Least Two Kinds of Infinity, and More

Gr 8 Up—For readers who haven't balked at Stephen Hawkings's A Brief History of Time (Bantam, 1988) or Robert P. Crease and Alfred Scharff Goldhaber's The Quantum Moment (Norton, 2014), this sustained ramble through the thickets of mathematics offers similarly lucid but challenging insights into our universe's deeper patterns and principles. Building not on a chronological but a conceptual framework outlined in the opening chapter, "Zeroth Chapter," the author explores the historical evolution of mathematical tools, conjectures, and concepts from numbers and geometrical shapes to primes, knots, algorithms, multiple dimensions, computers from the Antikythera Mechanism on, probability, "ridiculous" (i.e., negative, transcendental, surreal, and the like) numbers, and infinities of diverse flavor. He adds lots of small diagrams and photos to illustrate his topics, but appends no index or, aside from follow-up comments on scattered posers, back matter. A stand-up comedian as well as a trained mathematician, Parker lightens the intellectual load considerably with zingers ("That's the problem with binary jokes: they either work or they don't") and everyday examples from bar bets to dating algorithms. Still, even confirmed math geeks will find this pleasurable but not casual reading.—John Peters, Children's Literature Consultant, New York City