| Everything And More: A Compact History of Infinity |
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The book follows the history of humans’ struggle to understand, conceptualize, and calculate infinitely large and infinitely small quantities, focusing on the major innovators Pythagoras, Newton and Leibniz, Dedekind, and Cantor (these are very famous mathematicians but, in case you run in a different social circle, the book will explain who they are). There is a lot of technical math (more than in many other similar books) but it seems to be the minimum necessary to really “get” what’s being explained. Wallace’s style (which even while deconstructing complex equations he can’t seem to hide) is joyously verbose but at the same time extremely true to his no-superfluous-bullshit aesthetic. It’s a study in parenthetics: pages are crammed with footnotes (and footnotes-to-the-footnotes) and interpolations, each one graded for its relevance and degree of difficulty, and yet the reader still feels that he (the author) has stripped away all the clutter of a ‘real’ math text.
The multiple layers of organization and self-referential systems of abbreviation can sometimes veer towards overwhelming, but Wallace’s omnipresent obsession with his readers’ emotional state keeps him from losing you for too long. He writes with the enthusiasm of a hyperactive puppy but is able to reign himself in and remain focused and precise and funny. Reading David Foster Wallace is always worth the careful attention it requires, and seeing his take on transfinite math is an effective way to view his talent from a new perspective. His virtuosity is the biggest distraction; how he tells you something is often more fun than what he’s telling you. Craig Schum
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There is a plethora of pop science books geared towards explaining for us, the ignorant-but-curious, just how marvelous a given topic is; but while they all try, few are written with the wit and playfulness of Everything and More. Author David Foster Wallace, best known for his fiction, is also a schooled mathematician and makes subjects like set-theory and calculus not only comprehensible but entertaining (it’s an impressive feat to create a math book that makes you giggle).
