Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity - Softcover

Wallace, David Foster

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393339289 ISBN 13: 9780393339284

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2010

Synopsis

Is infinity a valid mathematical property or a meaningless abstraction? David Foster Wallace brings his intellectual ambition and characteristic bravura style to the story of how mathematicians have struggled to understand the infinite, from the ancient Greeks to the nineteenth-century mathematical genius Georg Cantor's counterintuitive discovery that there was more than one kind of infinity. Smart, challenging, and thoroughly rewarding, Wallace's tour de force brings immediate and high-profile recognition to the bizarre and fascinating world of higher mathematics.

About this title

Review:

Wallace is the perfect parachute buddy for a free fall into the mathematical and metaphysical abyss that is infinity.--Dennis Lim

Everything and More is, in nearly every way, a gift. It's a thoughtful and witty 300-page testimonial to the qualities I never fully understood that mathematics possessed: Math is astonishing and full of 'shadowlands, ' and--ultimately--stunning beauty.--Anthony Doerr

[Wallace] brings to his task a refreshingly conversational style as well as a surprisingly authoritative command of mathematics...A success.--John Allen Paulos

All the grace of pure mathematics without the parts that make me want to bang my head against the wall.--Daniel Handler

Shockingly readable...a brilliant antidote both to boring math textbooks and to pop-culture math books that emphasize the discoverer over the discovery.

Book Description:

The best-selling author of Infinite Jest on the two-thousand-year-old quest to understand infinity.

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0393339289
• ISBN 13: 9780393339284
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352