By Darren Glass, Gettysburg College

Summer is once again here, and I know that many of us need a break after another long, hard year. And once again the editor of this blog has asked me to recommend some books that are not too technical but that have enough of a mathematical bent that many MAA members might enjoy reading them in between their vacations and their research plans.

One of the more interesting books I read in the last year was When We Cease To Understand The World, written by Benjamin Labatut and beautifully translated by Adrian Nathan West. The book is part nonfiction essay and part novel (and it's not always clear which part is which) and features the stories of mathematicians like Shinichi Mochizuki and Alexander Grothendieck alongside Heisenberg, Schrödinger, Einstein, and a (fictional) mathematician-turned-gardener who “now speaks of mathematics as former alcoholics speak of booze, with a mixture of fear and longing.” The book tackles themes of mortality and genius and so much more. This description does not do the book justice, but I’m not sure anything I could write would. I am not the only person who loved it, as the book has won many awards and accolades. At 189 pages it isn’t a big gamble to pick it up, and I think most MAA members will enjoy it if they do.

Anyone who teaches probability courses might be interested in reading What Are The Chances: Why We Believe In Luck by Barbara Blatchley. The author is a psychologist who has written this short volume about the way that people have thought about randomness throughout history and across different cultures. The book also delves into some of the neuroscience and explains why I am utterly convinced that wearing my lucky socks contributed to the Braves’ World Series win last fall, even though I know that is completely ridiculous.

Those of you with good memories may recall that last year I recommended Ben Orlin’s Change is the Only Constant. So I was somewhat reluctant to include one of Orlin’s books on the list this year, but his new book Math Games With Bad Drawings is a perfect summer read. In the book, Orlin describes 75 ¼ (yes, you read that right) games that one can play related to geometry, probability, and other areas of mathematics with just some paper and pencils and occasionally some coins and dice. Even though I have only gotten my teenage son to play a few of them with me, just reading Orlin’s descriptions and discussion of the mathematics involved is a true pleasure, as he once again shows that he is one of the best expositors of mathematics we have these days. If you don’t believe me, check out this excerpt about Quantum Go Fish at Ars Technica.

This year I also read a pair of books that are by mathematicians but are less about mathematics than they are about how algorithms and technology are used in some not-so-good ways by society. Neither How Algorithms Create and Prevent Fake News by Noah Giansiracusa or The Shame Machine: Who Profits in the New Age of Humiliation by Cathy O’Neil are particularly uplifting looks at society, but both are very well-written and raise a number of important questions about how we create, consume, and share information in the 21st century. The books are quite different, but one common thread between them is how often organizations make choices based on what is profitable rather than what is best for the consumer, and how they can exploit the asymmetries in what information they have to do this.

Finally, it is hard to imagine that many people who would read a book review blog post on the MAA website haven’t already read Francis Su’s Mathematics For Human Flourishing, but if you have somehow missed this book, and the related article in the Monthly, and the many talks he has given on the topic, you should immediately remedy this by finding a copy of the book. In this book, Francis explains the joy of doing mathematics and the many forms of personal fulfillment that it can bring in a way that helped me better articulate something that I already knew to be true. He does this in part by telling the story of letters that he exchanged with Christopher Jackson, an inmate in federal prison who was discovering that joy under some of the hardest circumstances. The book is inspiring and well worth your time.

Darren Glass has been a mathematics professor at Gettysburg College for 15 years, where his teaching and research interests include number theory, graph theory, and cryptography. He is also the Dean of Natural Sciences, Computer Science, & Mathematics at Gettysburg. He is the Book Reviews editor for the American Mathematical Monthly and has also served as the chair of the MAA Basic Library List Committee, and written countless book reviews for a wide range of outlets. He always loves getting book recommendations, so please send him yours at dglass@gettysburg.edu.