I highly recommend this book.Broad coverage of high school topics This book is a wonderful supplement to the standard high school curriculum, beginning with algebra and extending through Euclidean geometry, analytic geometry, to differential and integral calculus, and including brief introductions to other "back of the book" topics like probability, determinants, and so on. It is full of hard-to-find details left behind by most texts, such as explicit solutions to third- and fourth- degree polynomials in one variable. It's fun to browse this book in search of such tidbits to fill in your mathematical knowledge.
"Mathematics..." is written at a level just right for someone who has progressed as far as calculus or college engineering math but no further. It is also nice that the myriad (albeit brief) historical references help connect the material with its initial development. Unfortunately, the lack of any contextual information (brief biographies would be welcome) make these references rather dry and unrevealing: authors, dates, and titles of publications is frequently all we get.
I have to agree, too, with the Willingboro reviewer: although this text covers a wide variety of traditional high school and early college topics, at the same time it clearly exhausts its author's knowledge of the subject and therefore cannot provide a foundation for proceeding further. It is akin to a travelogue that directs the reader along completed, well-worn paths, visiting all the conventional landmarks, without pointing out the existence of other paths, other points of interest, or taking the readers to lookout points and vistas suggesting territory remaining to be explored.
Almost all the topics covered are ancient, rarely extending beyond what was known by the middle of the 19th century. (A chapter on fractals is the only exception.) Many important and modern subjects are barely mentioned and certainly not developed beyond the limited introduction available in most high school texts: graph theory, number theory, complex analysis, algebraic geometry, functional analysis, group theory, Galois theory, differential geometry, category theory, ..., the list can go on and on. (For example, topology--a vast subject--gets less than three pages, whereas eight pages are devoted to illustrating the routine mechanics of solving euclidean triangles using trigonometry.) This is a shame, because the wealth of topics nevertheless discussed by this book provides an amazing foundation for introducing these modern ideas and pointing out their deeper implications and ramifications. As a result, mathematics comes out looking like a kind of beautiful fossil rather than an organic, evolving creature.
I would recomend using this book as a course textbook for middle school, high school, and early college level math classes.
I'm not displeased that I bought it, but it is not anywhere near as useful as I had hoped it would be. It contains a lot of historical tidbits (and hence serves as a kind of an index to the history of mathematics), but also contains a number of imprecisions and, sadly, some idiosyncratic notations.Unlimited Riches Gullberg gathered and organized this book over a ten year period. It is a charming compendium. I have been looking things up in it and browsing it for five years, and there are many areas I have not yet touched. I will be enjoying it for another five or ten years.
Why do I like it? Here are five reasons, one for each star.
First, it has wealth of facts and formulas, and it gives you a bit of history with the material. It is nice to see where things came from. Second, if you need to look something up, this is a good place to find it. Third, if you have studied mathematics or used it, you will meet your old friends on these pages, and you will learn something new about some of them. Fourth, if you are keen about the subject, you will see interesting ways of drawing connections between various results and subjects in this book. Fifth, the author's good humor and broad culture shine on these pages so that reading this book is a pleasure.
Editorial reviewer Donald Albers got it right in his Scientific American review when he said that if you were to have just one mathematics book on your shelf, this would be the book to have. I have many mathematics books. This is one that I keep close at hand in my office.
Highly recommended.