The Art of the Infinite: The Pleasures of Mathematics

Five Stars Biped The Kaplans write hugely entertaining and enlightening books on math.. A good book by professors with a wonderful writing style You can follow most of the math discussion without be a degreed mathematician, and there are some very surprising discoveries. A good book by professors with a wonderful writing style.. Fun math patterns Ben Casual reading. Fun math patterns. But sometimes the author is a little more poetic than he should be.

The journey is enriched by deft character studies of great mathematicians (and equally colorful lesser ones). The Art of the Infinite takes infinity, in its countless guises, as a touchstone for understanding mathematical thinking. Robert and Ellen Kaplan guide us through the "Republic of Numbers," where we meet both its upstanding citizens and its more shadowy dwellers; and transport us across the plane of geometry into the unlikely realm where parallel lines meet. And as we go deeper into infinity, we explore the most profound mystery of mathematics: Are its principles eternal truths that we discover? Or ones that we invent?