As part of a feeling that I "should" read more about the subject I seem to be dedicating my life to, I read A History of Mathematics. As there is a lot of history, the book is quite big and thick. It looks quite nice on my shelf - although I must admit that I did, in a way, steal it from the friend who I borrowed it from.
The telling of a mathematics story gives rise to a dilemma: how much maths does one need to explain? How interesting is a story about maths if you don't understand the maths? How uninteresting is a mathematics story when you remove any technical details?
I must say, that really getting into this book, for me, meant stopping every now and again to scribble some stuff down on the back of an envelope ("can that be right?"). Furthermore, some of the impressive achievements in mathematics are only impressive if you realise how difficult it was for them to come about (does it mean much to anyone that there's no general formula for solving cubics?). So whilst I found this book really interesting, widening my knowledge and allowing me to place myself in the mathematical realm, I do not think I will force anyone to read it. I do try, as often as I can, to retell the stories during my mathematics tutes - as you can imagine, this is often received with a standing applause.
Some of my favourite bits are the exceptional mathematics of the Babylonians, the romantic story of Galois (shot in a duel at age 21... cos of a girl... his theories were proved later), and the Alexandrian maps that didn't include the calculations of Eratosthenes.
