Zero to Lazy Eight: The Romance of Numbers

The Humez brothers, Alexander and Nicholas, are joined by Joseph Maguire in this exploration of numbers and the way we talk and think about them: four-square, dresses to the nines, at sixes and sevens, and so on. This book does for number theory (the most accessible branch of mathematics, and something we use every day without thinking about it) what the previous Humez bros. books ABC Et Cetera and Alpha to Omega did for Roman and Greek culture respectively: Everything you needed to know but never got around to asking (or did but your math teacher told you to siddown and shuddup while the guys with the slide rules in the front row performed mind-boggling computations with infuriating facility). This is math for the rest of us, from the viewpoint of its social embedding. Lots of anecdotes and curiosities here, such as the Seven Bridges of Koenigsberg problem and the surprising proof that there are several sizes of infinity. Occasionally dry but never dull, and Maguire's voice blends so well with the other two authors as to make this a virtually seamless collaboration.

As the editorial review stated, phrases containing numbers are integral to our everyday speech, yet we would be in many cases hard pressed to explain what they mean, exactly, or where they came from. This book manages to impart vast amounts of information about these and many other topics in a conversational way that makes it seem natural to go from talking about turtles to discussing the freezing point of the universe. I've used this book as source material for at least one school paper, and for entertainment the rest of the time. Great for anyone interested in the history of words, or of numbers, or of something completly else, as it contains all of this.