The 50 chapters in this light, occasionally amusing book by Swiss science journalist Szpiro (Kepler's Conjecture
) range from two to six pages and include very little mathematics. They cover a wide range of topics, from profiles of famous mathematicians—Daniel Bernoulli, John von Neumann and Niels Henrik Abel, for example—to a superficial discussion of some unproven mathematical conjectures. Szpiro also touches on game theory, Bible codes, the game of Tetris, Isaac Newton's prediction of the end of the world, and the need for insurance. Although mathematics, at some level, is associated with each topic, rarely is it made central, so little holds the book together. Nonetheless, individual chapters are engaging. One on proportional representation (in Congress, for example) documents the surprising fact that a state's representation might increase as its percentage of the total population decreases. Another explains the ways our calendars have been adjusted to compensate for the fact that "the time between two spring equinoxes is... 365.242199 days, which in turn equals nearly, but not exactly, 365.25 days." The discrepancy causes a host of temporal problems. Many of the chapters have appeared previously in the Swiss newspaper Neue Zurcher Zeitung
, which accounts for their abbreviated style and, perhaps, their repetitiveness. (Mar.)
