Abstract

This anthology has had a fantastic success in the U.S., selling over 200,000 sets in a few months, and prompting its astounded editor to remark that the tasteful four-volume set must have been secretly pushed by interior decorators! We have had so much of anthologies in late years that one automatically inclines to discount their lasting value in a field where profound and hard thinking is so necessary. Let it be said at once that Mr. Newman has not attempted to give us any “straight” mathematics. No, this is a book about mathematics, not of mathematics. But it is one which—if I may use an overworked phrase—no one who is interested in mathematics, be he a philosopher, economist, strategist, historian or even mathematician, can possibly afford to be without. Its generous excerpts from the works of great mathematicians and perceptive commentators on mathematics are stimulating reading. The excerpts number 133 and range in length from five to seventy pages. There is something here for anyone with any interest in one of the mightiest adventures of the human mind.