The Advent of the Algorithm

I really wanted to like this book, as well as another by the same author: A Tour of the Calculus.

The battered scan should convince you that I DID read this book…some parts several times…

David Berlinski clearly knows his mathematics, and his "formula" of explaining things through historical anecdotes, should work, but it doesn't.

The problem is that the anecdotes start, very quickly, to seem forced. You just *know* that they did not happen.

In addition, there are many other books-some reviewed here-that do a much better of of accomplishing what Berlinski set out to do.

Patrick Jost