The latest review of The Universe in Zero Words has just come out at The Guardian‘s website, on a blog written by GrrlScientist. Here’s the link!
Here are a couple of encouraging comments from The Grrl herself:
Comprised of short lively vignettes that are part biography, part history and part mathematics, this aesthetically-pleasing book is liberally embellished with period art and engravings, ancient manuscripts, colour photographs, maps and diagrammes. Even the dust jacket is designed with the mathematical aesthete in mind: a close look at the stars reveals they are mathematical equations superimposed on the night sky!
As I’ve mentioned before, one of my objectives in writing this book was to help the reader perceive the beauty in math (specifically equations), so I am always glad when reviewers comment on the attractive appearance of the book. She ends her review:
This attractive 224-page book is a breezy romp through 2500 years of mathematical ideas. It includes four parts that are divided into a total of 24 fairly short chapters, as well as an introduction and conclusion, acknowledgments, bibliography and an index. This well-designed and accessible book will delight and inform the student, mathematician or historian in your life and it may also help you rediscover your forbidden love for mathematics.
She does have one small (tongue-in-cheek?) complaint:
I was surprised that the chapter discussing the discovery of zero neglected to mention that Alex the grey parrot discovered zero on his own — an intellectual achievement that took humans millennia to accomplish.
Mea culpa! I’m afraid that I have not been keeping up with the progress of mathematical parrots. (Although ants and whales do get mentioned in my book.)
