Book Review: e: The Story of a Number

e: The Story of a Number
by Eli Maor

In my continuing nerd book series, this was next. (Maybe someday I'll read my number books in order, 0, 1, i, φ, e, π. [1 and i are interchangeable, as they both have a magnitude of 1 in the complex plane!]) Maor starts very well, he is a mathematician and recognizes Petr Beckman's "History of Pi" as an excellent book. But things drift slowly down hill from there. Unlike some of the other famous numbers, e is a relatively new invention, barely predating calculus. In standard mathematical history form the story drifts from one little aside to another, touching upon the history of i, π, music, calculus, and who knows what else. The math content is fairly low, until the 4 or 5 pages spent on partial derivatives that strikes out of the blue, daring you to give up on the book one chapter from the end.

I think the most telling thing I can say about this book, is that it left me with very little new trivia to try to work into conversations. Usually nerd books leave me spewing information about weird things for weeks.