The History of Mathematics: An Introduction

The scope is relatively comprehensive: spanning from archeological finds that suggest early numbers systems to early twentieth century work in countability and set theory.

The text itself reminded me quite a bit of my old high school history books -- readable but a little slow-paced at times. More interesting, though, are the problems at the end of every section
-- problems that require the use of ideas and techniques from the time period being described. The author suggests these exercises as a good way to learn both mathematics and history, but they can be safely skipped.

Just a single complaint: the book seems to have a slight slant toward Western mathematics: early Greeks, Europeans from the middle ages, modern Americans recieve the bulk of the attention while there is a single ten-page section entitled "Mathematics in the Near and Far East". While not a fatal flaw (it is of course true that most of modern mathematics has its roots in the West), I would have liked to see a more balanced account.


Easy to learn about the history of Math.   May 6, 2001
2 out of 20 found this review helpful

I got a lot of information from this book. It has easy to follow explation about the therom.


Nothing Special to report   May 8, 2008
M. Nelson (CA)
This book is too long, there's no way more than half of it can be covered in a semester. The problems are very easy and don't require the reader to think too often. I think this book had a hard time finding it's identity. The chapters are written like a history book with little computation involved but the questions at the end are all math based, generally reapeating the same concept over and over again. I'd say there are better, more concise, Math History books out there....for a cheaper too!!!