Geometry Civilized: History, Culture, and Technique
"Wonderfully illustrated...Heilbron covers Euclidean geometry, including behavior of circles, and plane trigonometry. All is explained from scratch, but not in the style of a textbook. Nor is it exactly a history of these topics, although it is erudite. The effect is to impart dignity to the subject and wisdom to its readers.... Heilbron's [book] is a deeply humanist work, which is a strange thing to say about a book with detailed geometry on every page. It may be that the devil is in the details, but so too is the step-by-step, line by painful line, progress of human achievement. The full immersion in the subject that Heilbron provides allows one to recognize oneself in the work of others, and to share in that inclusive web of our history, culture and technique." --Nature"A marvellous tale of how, throughout much of recorded history, geometrical thinking and civilization have been closely intertwined...Geometry Civilizedis a beautifully illustrated book. And you'll find that it can be read in at least two ways. For pleasure, in which case you can skip the exercises if you wish, or for mathematical enlightenment, in which case you definitely can't. Either way, you will be richly entertained with topics such as the problems solved geometrically in the construction of decorative cathedral windows around 1300 and the role played by geometry in Christopher Columbus's creative misconception about the distance from Spain to Japan." --Ian Stewart inThe New Scientist