Book Review:; A Brief History of Mathematics for Curious Minds

Abstract

SIAM Review, Volume 68, Issue 2, Page 466-467, June 2026.
Reading a book about the history of mathematics is never a waste of time, especially if you are a working mathematician, whether applied or pure. Obviously, there are many excellent monographs devoted to specific periods such as nineteenth-century mathematics, or to specific subjects such as mathematical analysis, and these serve specialists very well. The book under review is more ambitious and attempts to cover the whole history of mathematics under the additional assumption that the intended reader is a layperson, not necessarily a professional mathematician. Remarkably, this ambitious task is carried out in just over 200 pages organized into ten chapters, complemented by a bibliography, a name index, and 32 short appendices containing mathematical gems.