New Mathematics Books
Last updated: October 16, 2023
It's a golden age for popular math books and as new books are published, we'll list the ones written by Five Books interviewees and frequently recommended authors, here. Please email us ([email protected]) with any books that should appear on this list.
“I can also highly recommend a book about the history of math, The Secret Lives of Numbers: A Global History of Mathematics & its Unsung Trailblazers by Kate Kitagawa and Timothy Revell. I love global history and mathematics is a really interesting lens to look at it through. Early on, we learn that we should perhaps not be calling it Pythagoras’ theorem, but the Gugou Theorem, as it had been earlier proved in China. Notable in the book is the extent to which similar concepts were discovered independently around the world.” Read more...
Notable Nonfiction of Fall 2023
Sophie Roell, Journalist
“You don’t actually do any math in the book, he talks about what, chronologically, was next discovered, and the next step that makes sense. It took hundreds of years to make each discovery, but each step is logical. He’s basically explaining the mathematical ideas you use every day. It’s elegant, it’s beautiful, and the level is quite reasonable.” Read more...
The Best Literary Science Writing: The 2023 PEN/E.O. Wilson Book Award
David Hu, Scientist
I Can't Do Maths: Why Children Say It and How to Make A Difference
by Alf Coles & Nathalie Sinclair
In I Can't Do Maths two professors of maths education, Alf Coles and Nathalie Sinclair, look at why it is that some kids are put off learning maths and whether there's a way around this. In particular, they analyze five 'dogmas' that they challenge, including 'Maths is always right or wrong' and 'Maths is for some people not others.'
The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics
by Tim Harford
***One of the best books on critical thinking, recommended by Nigel Warburton***
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics," said Benjamin Disraeli (according to Mark Twain, anyway), in what has become one of the most well-known quotations in the English language, and certainly the only one most of us know about statistics. And yet...in practice many of us continue to be misled by them on a daily basis. In The Data Detective (called How to Make the World Add Up in the UK), British economist Tim Harford tries to equip us with tools to take on the latest misinformation.
We've also interviewed Tim, a Financial Times columnist and BBC Radio and TV presenter, about books on two topics: Unexpected Economics (including a comic book) and the best Introductions to Economics.
The Wonder Book of Geometry: A Mathematical Story
by David Acheson
From Thales's theorem to the Banach-Tarski paradox, Oxford mathematician David Acheson's book, The Wonder Book of Geometry, is a lively attempt to bring to life geometry—literally, 'earth measurement'—and make it accessible to the general public. It has a lot of illustrations, not just of triangles, but portraits of mathematicians (like Euclid of Alexandria), maps, early editions of books, news clippings, a Ming dynasty copy of an ancient Chinese text, even postage stamps. According to Acheson, he wrote the book “because I believe that geometry can offer the quickest route to the whole nature and spirit of mathematics at its best, at almost any age, provided the subject is presented with sufficient imagination.”
The Math of Life and Death
by Kit Yates
The Math of Life and Death, by Kit Yates, a senior lecturer in mathematical biology at the University of Bath, is an excellent popular math book, demonstrating the many times math plays a critical role in our daily lives—often without us even knowing it.
Kit Yates chose the Best Math Books of 2019 for us. Is math really a matter of life or death? He spoke to us about his book in a Q&A.