Books I'm Reading: The Joy of X – A Guided Tour of Math, from One to Infinity

I picked up The Joy of X (Marriner Books, 2013) at Haneda Airport in Tokyo on my way back to the US after my stay in Japan in September. I chose it because it's a collection of essays that can be read in any order, although they are arranged so that, read in sequence, they take the reader on a trip through mathematics, starting with simple arithmetic and progressing through geometry, trigonometry, and calculus with side trips to explore various other kinds of math, ending with thoughts on the idea of infinity. On airplanes, I like something that can be read in bursts. The essays were originally published in a series in The New York Times. 

This was for the most part a quick, entertaining read. Most of the essays were easy to follow and engagingly written. A few of the later ones were more difficult, but that is more a reflection on me than on the book. I found the discussions of prime numbers and infinity of particular interest. Worth the time.