The Art of More: How Mathematics Created Civilization

by Michael Brooks

An illuminating, millennia-spanning history of the impact mathematics has had on the world, and the fascinating people who have mastered its inherent power
 
Counting is not innate to our nature, and without education humans can rarely count past three — beyond that, it’s just “more.” But once harnessed by our ancestors, the power of numbers allowed humanity to flourish in ways that continue to lead to discoveries and enrich our lives today.
 
Ancient tax collectors used basic numeracy to fuel the growth of early civilization, navigators used clever geometrical tricks to engage in trade and connect people across vast distances, astronomers used logarithms to unlock the secrets of the heavens, and their descendants put them to use to land us on the moon. In every case, mathematics has proved to be a greatly underappreciated engine of human progress.
 
In this captivating, sweeping history, Michael Brooks acts as our guide through the ages. He makes the case that mathematics was one of the foundational innovations that catapulted humanity from a nomadic existence to civilization, and that it has since then been instrumental in every great leap of humankind. Here are ancient Egyptian priests, Babylonian bureaucrats, medieval architects, dueling Swiss brothers, renaissance painters, and an eccentric professor who invented the infrastructure of the online world. Their stories clearly demonstrate that the invention of mathematics was every bit as important to the human species as was the discovery of fire. From first page to last, The Art of More brings mathematics back into the heart of what it means to be human.

• ISBN10: 1524748994
• ISBN13: 9781524748999
• Publish Date: 18 January 2022 (first published 9 September 2021)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Random House USA Inc
• Imprint: Pantheon
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 336
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9781524748999

Reviews

[annieb123]

Originally posted on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

The Art of More is a layman accessible examination of how mathematics has shaped civilization well explained by Dr. Michael Brooks. Due out 18th Jan 2021 from Knopf Doubleday on their Pantheon imprint, it's 336 pages and will be available in hardcover, audio, and ebook format.

This is a fascinating look at mathematical concepts and how they have fostered exploration and discovery and why mathematics is fundamental to, well, everything. The author is wonderfully adept at explaining complex ideas and auxiliary concepts in simple and understandable ways and even for maths-shy readers, there are fascinating and valuable takeaways to be found here.

The chapters are arranged in essay style units written around a field of mathematics: arithmetic, geometry, algebra, calculus, logarithms, imaginary numbers, statistics, information theory, and a summary at the end giving a good broad overview tying everything together, and poking a bit of a pin into Le Corbusier's pomposity and the ascription of mystical significance to mathematical concepts like pi, e, and Planck's constant (and jolly well deserved, says this bionerd). If we can de-mystify, we can maybe make them more accessible, more useful, and more fun to everyone.

Five stars. This would be a good choice for public or school library acquisition, and for readers of popular science. For readers who still have a dog-eared copy of Gödel Escher Bach on their bookshelves, there's a lot to love in The Art of More, and I found Dr. Brooks' style much more accessible and less impenetrable than Dr. Hofstadter's.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.