This was a textbook for a math class I had while in college. The class was Math 419 (smirk); Math History. The book is shaped like a paperback novel and covers some of the most important Big Ideas in the history of thinkers over the centuries. It gives the context and backgrounds of the breakthroughs. Learn about how the Pythagoreans--the students of Pythagoras who likely came up with the theorem that today bears his name--took the person who discovered/realized that the square-root of two is irrational and drowned them.
Learn what happens in ancient Syracuse when you disobey direct orders, like don't kill the renowned genius Archimedes (guess what happens).
After moving to New York, there was a time when this was my subway book.
Many books that will appear here will have been subway books.
I bought the book at El Corral bookstore on campus at Cal Poly, in San Luis Obispo, in either September of 2003, January of 2004, or March of 2004. I still use it for proof clarifications on the quadrature of an arbitrary rectangle and for information on Euler. I'm trying to do something with Lenny in some fashion in my writings...
The professor for this class was an imposing old figure. He had a penchant for speaking quietly and towards the baseboards of the walls on either side of our desks, which we all felt was off, since he was large man in the shoulder and stature department. A young lady in the front row asked him, on the second day of class if he wouldn't mind speaking up, and he said, "Uhhm, no, I'm not going to be doing that."
Okay, we all sorta said to ourselves, as we prepared to strain our ears for the next ten weeks. It was a class I enjoyed and remember fondly.
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