Customer Reviews

The Last Recreations: Hydras, Eggs, and Other Mathematical Mystifications

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Reading this takes me back to time spent in my school's library poring over Gardner's columns in Scientific American. Several of the columns in this book I first read as a nerdy 14 year old and was staggered then (as I am now) by the elegance and beauty of the ideas they contained. Now I read it with a far greater appreciation of the problems and ideas expressed, but that doesn't compare with the sheer sense of wonder I experienced first time around.

I have long enjoyed reading Martin Gardner's books for their content of entertaining mathematical puzzles. Unfortunately, this volume is not as entertaining as the earlier books. The book takes thoroughness to the extreme, beating every issue to death and hence reading more like a textbook than a puzzle book. Further there is little diversity in topics - most chapters come from number theory or topology. Still you will find some interesting problems in this one: flatland, cannibals, taxicab geometry, checkers, the pigeonhole, and non-Euclidean geometry. Just don't plan to read everything or you will end up bogged down.

Maybe its that I'm looking at the past through rose colored glasses, but when I read this I did'nt experience the same sense of wonder that I did when I was 13. Martin touches on very very cool topics, but my main gripe is that he whizzes through everything, often just giving a pointer to another book, which is great in that it encourages more exploration but is frustrating at the same time. But if you havent encountared recreational mathematics before, take a look, Martin does a wonderful job in making math FUN!