Perfect Figures: The Lore of Numbers and How We Learned to Count [Hardcover]

Bunny Crumpacker (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 7, 2007

Since the beginning of civilization, numbers have been more than just a way to keep count. Perfect Figures tells the stories of how each number came to be and what incredible associations and superstitions have been connected to them ever since. Along the way are some of the great oddities of numbers' past as:

-a time when finger-counting was a sign of intelligence (the Venerable Bede could count to a million on his hands)

-the medieval Algorists, who were burnt at the stake for their use of Arabic rather than Roman numerals

-the Bank of England, which stubbornly kept accounts on notched wooden sticks until 1826

Filled with Crumpacker's eloquent wit and broad intelligence, Perfect Figures brings the history of numbers to life just as Bill Bryson did for the English language in The Mother Tongue.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this lighter-than-light tour, Crumpacker (The Sex Life of Food) reconstructs the history of each of the numbers one through 12, their etymology, how they came to be written and their perceived qualities across various cultures. To this she adds a farrago of facts, observations and her own odd and usually humorous free associations. For example, about one and two, she points out that in some languages, God is the same as the word for one, and two is the same as the word for sin; about three, she says that Captain Kirk and Spock played chess three times.... Kirk won all three games. And she tells us that in China nine signifies good luck, in Japan bad. Besides these cultural references, Crumpacker includes a description of the evolution of counting strategies, discussions of Fibonacci numbers, the Golden Mean, and binary and other bases. Crumpacker is erudite and packs hundreds of facts that range from the educational to the frivolous into a work that is best described as frothy. (Aug.)
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Review

Praise for The Sex Life of Food:

"[A] sly meditation on the delicious and dirty convergences of sustenance and psyche."

--The Washington Post Book World

"A buffet of facts...served with saucy humor....Hilarious."

--The Wall Street Journal

"[A] sweeping look at how food, sex, and desire are intertwined. A"

--Entertainment Weekly

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books; First Edition edition (August 7, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312360053
• ISBN-13: 978-0312360054
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,687,616 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating look into the secret life of numbers, February 22, 2008

By 

Christina Lockstein "Christy's Book Blog" (Oconto Falls, WI USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Perfect Figures: The Lore of Numbers and How We Learned to Count (Hardcover)

Perfect Figures by Bunny Crumpacker is a fantastic book that should be getting far more attention than it is. I've always wondered why numbers are written the way they are and how they evolved from thought to drawn figure to abstraction. Crumpacker writes with a delightful sense of humor making what could have been a dry dissertation-style book into an informative, funny, quirky read. Every other chapter I was bouncing up to tell my husband something new that amazed me. Wonder why a 2 looks like it does? It was originally two horizontal lines, when the writer got lazy and didn't lift up the pencil between the two, it turned into a z-like figure that became our two. Want to know what the number three has to do with a witness? The Latin word test-es means the third party to something between two other people and is related to the word tris-tes. That's where we get testimony, protest, contest, and testament, all from a third person witnessing what happens between another two. Crumpacker regularly uses humor to keep the book moving. In a description of many of the reverential views of the number three, she lists the three times chess was played on the original TV series Star Trek. Rarely has a book taught me so much and made it so enjoyable.