Customer Reviews

One Million

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Hendrik Hertzberg's "Politics" is the best book on politics I have ever read. Period. His "One Million" is a highly original book that makes your "feel" for numbers improve by each page. Time for a revised reprint though.

How big is the quantity 1,000,000? Do you know? Okay, you know it's a thousand thousands or some other multiple or metaphor. But can you think of the quantity one million and _know_ it? This book allows you to do that.

In a world where we are bombarded with huge numbers from every side with graphs and charts that show comparisons--sometimes good, sometimes not so good--this book is a revelation. Its graphics are stark simplicity: 200 pages of an array of dots, each page has 5,000 dots; every two-page spread has 10,000 dots, all arranged in rows on each page of 100 dots per row.

To keep us interested in the numbers and not numb us with visual repetition, certain dots are set aside and numbered with a particular statistic from fanciful (2: population of the Garden of Eden) to concrete for the time of the book's publication (a number in the 11,000's for the number of taxicabs in New York City in 1970). Each page is also headed with where we are in the march to 10^6.

This is not a book you "read" so much as experience. Once you page through it and understand what One Million means you can start to generalize by going back to the first page: One billion is the same as the first fifth of the dots on the first page--where every dot represents a copy of the book.

I suppose it is out of print because of the ease which anyone could reproduce it on a personal computer nowadays and the obsolesence of some of the statistics. But as an educational artifact for those who need help with their numeracy, it is priceless.

I only hope it is reprinted, or its equivalent is recreated soon for the benefit of all students of Number.

This book represents a very interesting way to demonstrate to students and children what one million means.

I OWN THE ORIGINAL EDITION OF HERZBERG'S ONE MILLION. BACK THEN, I USED IT TO CONVEY TO MY CHILDREN - HOW MUCH IS A MILLION. THE NEW EDITION HAS BEEN IMPROVED BY THE ADDITION OF MORE DATA AT DIFFERENT POINTS. AGAIN, IT IS INVALUABLE SINCE THE HUMAN MIND DOES NOT EASILY HANDLE ENORMOUS NUMBERS.
BARBARA LEE CHERTOK
YES! I BOUGHT THE NEW EDITION ON AMAZON.

The idea is perfect, but the call-outs are generally US-oriented trivia. This does not help the global reader, who probably are more for general interest reading, possibly 'light entertainment,' a la popcorn movie.
Try instead Everything Explained Through Flowchart.
This book follows through and finishes well on a (different) noble concept.