Imagine you are a mathematician who is drinking in a bar with your buddies. Several hours into your drinking session, a half-drunk friend says the following, "hey, I bet you can't write a book about the numbers 1 through 9." Intrigued by the challenge, you proceed to take up the drunken bet, and write a book about the first nine integers. The book contains some interesting parts -- such as the relationship between the prime numbers and 4/4 musical time -- but it also contains long passages that come across as aimless rambling. In other sections, meanwhile, it seems that you are not interested in providing insights to the reader, but are rather using the book as an excuse to show-off all of your scientific knowledge. In a nutshell, that is how this work came across to me. Without a doubt, it contains a lot of interesting ideas, and if it were structured differently it could have provided a great learning tool. Sadly, however, I was largely put off by the book, and by the last pages all I wanted was for it to end.
2 out of 5 stars
