Andrew Hodges. One to Nine (2007) Hodges takes each of the first ten natural numbers (including zero in the chapter about The Unloved One), and talks about their significance and meanings. It’s mostly about the math, but Hodges has a large store of cultural relevance to share as well. Again, much of that is about the math: It took a surprisingly long time moving from the practical use of negative numbers to denote debts in casting accounts to the acceptance of their places in mathematics. The same is true of complex numbers, which were still labelled “imaginary numbers” when I was in middle school.
Hodges writes an easy style, which should give this book a wide audience. But his inclusion of real math and problems for the reader to solve will limit his audience to those with enough math background to understand his narrative, even if only vaguely. Luckily, I am one of those. I enjoyed the book, skipped almost all the problems, and followed the math far enough to get the flavour of that which was beyond me. A tasty treat. ***
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