***
BOOK: How to Bake π–An Edible Exploration of the Mathematics of Mathematics
AUTHOR: Eugenia Cheng
YEAR OF PUBLICATION: 2015
REVIEW:
***
How to Bake Pi is simply terrific–one of those unclassifiable books that’s incredibly smart and incredibly appealing. It’s about math, and why it’s more than just numbers, why it’s more weird and wonderful than you probably think, why math makes hard things easier, why it shouldn’t be frightening or baffling, and what category theory is. It’s also about cooking and baking–and since math is about drawing analogies, Ms. Cheng provides us with a myriad of examples including custard, cake, lasagna, baked Alaska, fruit crisp, flourless chocolate cake, bread pudding, and all manner of other delicious treats. (She even includes the recipes in case we want to try some of these treats, and analogies, at home.)
***
Sounds intriguing, yes? What else is it about, you ask? Well, abstraction, and using your imagination. How children learn to count. Lego blocks. Running the New York City marathon. Generalizations. Topology and how a bagel is like a coffee cup. Rationality. Logic. Paradoxes. Small talk at cocktail parties. Being a female mathematician trying to make small talk at cocktail parties. St. Paul’s Cathedral. Families. Mathematical family trees (Ms. Cheng’s mathematical great-grandfather was Alan Turing). Musical family trees (her pianistic great-grandmother was Clara Schumann). Belief. Understanding. Knowledge. And, here’s the most important part, I think…I admit that I do not understand every bit of her explanations regarding her esoteric field of study, but what I absolutely do understood here is the joy and the beauty that she has found in mathematics. Her love for her chosen subject, her joy in teaching it, is infectious. It makes me want to learn more and read more. It makes me want to take one of her classes (alas, a bit geographically inconvenient for me). It makes me want to read her other books. It makes me want to meet her at a bar and talk for hours, or visit her and try some olive oil plum cake. I thought of Howard Thurman’s famous quotation while I was reading How to Bake π: “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” Her aim is to rid the world of “math phobia.” I’d say she’s well on her way.
***
Here’s how the book ends:
“…understanding is still kept a secret, at least in mathematics. Students of all levels are shown the rules but kept in the dark about the reasons. We encourage children to ask the question ‘Why?’ but only up to a point, because beyond that point we might not understand it ourselves. So we stifle their quest for illumination to match our own inability to provide it. Instead of being afraid of that darkness, we should bring everyone to the edge of it and say: Look! Here is an area that needs illumination. Bring fire, torches, candles–anything you can think of that will cast light. Then we can lay down our foundations and build our great buildings, cure diseases, invent fabulous new machines, and whatever else we think the human race should be doing. But first of all we need some light.”
Pick up this book, learn and enjoy, and let there be light upon us all.
***
RATING (one to five whistles, with five being the best): 4 Whistles
***
HOW TO PURCHASE: Amazon
***
Laura LaVelle is an attorney and writer who lives in Connecticut, in a not quite 100-year-old house, along with her husband, two daughters, and a cockatiel.
Laura can be contacted at laura@newswhistle.com
***
Lead-In Image (Book Cover) by Basic Books
***
ALSO ON OUR BOOKSHELVES:
A Countess Below Stairs, Eva Ibbotson
A Gentleman in Moscow, Amor Towles
A Man Called Ove, Fredrik Backman
A Patchwork Planet, Anne Tyler
A Room With a View, E.M. Forster
A Wandering Eye: Travels with My Phone, Miguel Flores-Vianna
An Infamous Army, Georgette Heyer
Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Anne Of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery
Arthur & George, Julian Barnes
Ayesha at Last, Uzma Jalaluddin
Blue Highways, William Least Heat-Moon
Bonjour Tristesse, Francoise Sagan
Books for Living, Will Schwalbe
Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, Roz Chast
Cheaper by the Dozen, Frank B. Gilbreth, Jr. & Ernestine Gilbreth Carey
Cockpit Confidential, Patrick Smith
Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
Death in Profile, Guy Fraser-Sampson
Decorating a Room of One’s Own, Susan Harlan
Dept. of Speculation, Jenny Offill
Diary of a Provincial Lady, E.M. Delafield
Ed Emberly’s Drawing Book of Animals, Ed Emberly
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, Gail Honeyman
Endangered Pleasures, Barbara Holland
Envious Casca, Georgette Heyer
Fever Dream, Samanta Schweblin
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, E.L. Konigsburg
Gaudy Night, Dorothy L. Sayers
Gift from the Sea, Anne Morrow Lindbergh
H is for Haiku, Sydell Rosenberg
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, J.K. Rowling, John Tiffany, & Jack Thorne
Hemingway Didn’t Say That, Garson O’Toole
Hide My Eyes, Margery Allingham
Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen, Laurie Colwin
Hyperbole and a Half, Allie Brosh
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou
I Will Always Write Back, Caitlin Alifirenka & Martin Ganda with Liz Welch
If on a winter’s night a traveler, Italo Calvino
Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor, Stephanie Barron
Jim Trelease’s Read-Aloud Handbook, edited and revised by Cyndi Giorgis
Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, Anthony Bourdain
Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke
Lizard Music, Daniel Pinkwater
Madeleine’s Ghost, Robert Girardi
Magpie Murders, Anthony Horowitz
Malice Aforethought, Frances Iles
Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, Helen Simonson
Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town, Jon Krakauer
My Life in France, Julia Child with Alex Prud’homme
Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
New York New York, Richard Berenholtz
Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
Notorious RBG, Irin Carmon & Shana Knizhnik
One Summer: America 1927, Bill Bryson
Out of the Blackout, Robert Bernard
Parnassus on Wheels & The Haunted Bookshop, Christopher Morley
Plotted: A Literary Atlas, Andrew DeGraff
Sanditon, Jane Austen and Another Lady
Selected Poems of Langston Hughes
Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, Carlo Rivelli
Sorcery and Cecelia: Or the Enchanted Chocolate Pot, Patricia Wrede & Caroline Stevermer
Still the Promised Land, Natwar Gandhi
Straying from the Flock: Travels in New Zealand, Alexander Elder
Strength in What Remains: Tracy Kidder
Super Sad True Love Story, Gary Shteyngart
Tales of the Unexpected, Roald Dahl
The Book of Forgotten Authors, Christopher Fowler
The Book of Imaginary Beings, Jorge Luis Borges
The Cuckoo’s Calling, Robert Galbraith
The Daily Jane Austen: A Year of Quotes, Devoney Looser
The Dancer of Izu, Kawabata Yasunari
The Great Passage, Shion Miura
The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson
The House with a Clock in Its Walls, John Bellairs
The Ice House, Minette Walters
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot
The Longbourn Letters, Rose Servitova
The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., Adelle Waldman
The Making of Jane Austen, Devoney Looser
The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat, Oliver Sacks
The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, Kate DiCamillo
The Mistletoe Murder and Other Stories, P.D. James
The Missing Piece, Shel Silverstein
The Monogram Murders, Sophie Hannah
The Mother & Child Project, Hope Through Healing Hands (ed.)
The Piano Shop on the Left Bank, Thad Carhart
The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark
The Rosie Project, Graeme Simsion
The Secret Art of Dr. Seuss, Theodor Geisel (illustrator), Maurice Sendak (introduction)
The Snowy Day, Ezra Jack Keats
The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, Gabrielle Zevin
The Swans of Fifth Avenue, Melanie Benjamin
The Tale of Despereaux, Kate DiCamillo
The Tender Bar, J.R. Moehringer
The Three Questions, Jon J Muth
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Rachel Joyce
The Unrest-Cure and Other Stories, Saki
The War on Normal People, Andrew Yang
The Weird World of Wes Beattie, John Norman Harris
The Westing Game, Ellen Raskin
The Woman in Black, Susan Hill
The Women in Black, Madeleine St John
They Call Me Naughty Lola, David Rose
Thing Explainer, Randall Munroe
Touch Not the Cat, Mary Stewart
We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson
When Breath Becomes Air, Paul Kalanithi
Worth a Thousand Words, Brigit Young
You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life, Eleanor Roosevelt