Book Review: A big fat zero

As of last night, I am done with "The Nothing that Is: A Natural History of Zero". I would like to rename the book "A humanity major trying to write a math book: A pile of garbage". Notice that I didn't say I finished it, but that I am done with it. The author constantly drifts off for two and three sentences at a time, comparing mathematicians use of exponents to authors writing a book, or throwing in references to Lot and his family, or whatever else seems to suit his fancy. He's trying to write a book about the history of the number zero relying strongly on metaphors and Shakespeare plays. Bad idea. It was pretty much unreadable. The author is overly verbose, and seems to be working very hard to show you how many things he knows, about every topic under the sun. If someone would be so kind as to go through and highlight the one sentence per paragraph that has something to do with the real topic of the book, I might give it another go.

Here's a quote: "Any five-year-old will tell you that negative numbers aren't numbers at all, and phylogeny recapitulated ontogeny in taking its time to recognize negatives."

Could someone tell me what this one has to do with anything? "What does it take for an immigrant to the Republic of Numbers to gain citizenship? Think of the situation with words and with ideas. New words are always frisking about us like puppies."