An interesting little book which gives you an extraordinarily insightful look at the History of Mathematics, how it progressed in societies and how societies progressed with it. It is also a nice way to gage just how well you know the subject. I know mathematics at about the level of the Renaissance. ( )

I found the first part of this book interesting, as I had never realized how radical the idea of zero was considered. The rest of it I loved; it brought back many pleasant memories of my Philosophy of Science and Vistas in Astronomy courses. The only complaint I had was that I wanted more details about the topics (and that’s not bad for an introductory book)! ( )

An intriguing look at the history of a special number, zero. Written in an easily digestible form it gives a great overview over the clash of philosophies which happened around zero and what effects of them we still face today. Not only for science and math buffs! ( )

I was initially skeptical about this book, because in the early chapters I felt like Seife sometimes presented questionable anecdotes as fact. Plus, for the chapters that I knew the most about, I lamented the lack of footnotes, which isn't really a fair criticism of a popular science work. The book quickly won me over, though, and I often found myself reluctant to put it down. The story presented here is about much more than math: there's history, philosophy, religion, and modern physics too. Much of the material was already familiar to me, but Seife brought it all together into a satisfying overview of the evolution of western thought. I would recommend this even to people who don't particularly like math; it's not very technical and is full of information that would be interesting to anyone. ( )

Seife's first book covers a lot of ground in relating the history of zero, but he does an excellent job of explaining things clearly and well. ( )