Treasures found at the Discount Bin

At the local Barnes and Nobles bookstore, there is a discount section where we find outdated books such as "Teach yourself Windows 95" and other books that has trouble selling. I found two GREAT mathematics and scientific works which do not have the lastest book covers as found on Amazon. These are probably old editions. But nevertheless it is still great work.


I am both happy and disappointed. I am happy that I find such bargain. I am however disappointed that such great works end up in the dime-a-dozen bin.


I love great scientific books written for general public. The hardcore, professional versions are too difficult for most and are for extreme students or scientists.



The first treasure I found is Roger Penrose's Road to Reality. The modern cover looks like the figure on the right. This book is BIG. It collects what physicists know today. This is not like a typical textbook. It has light description of the heavy duty mathematics involved in physics and it will take years of schooling to understand much of it. This book is hard. Although I don't understand most topics, I can still sense Penrose's enthusiasm in math and physics as you read. But the idea is exactly like my math book work! Except this journey takes you much, much further.




The second treasure is Keith Devlin's "The Millennium Problems: The Seven Greatest Unsolved Mathematical Puzzles of Our Time". This book describes the 7 math problems that the Clay Institute would offer a million dollar to a solution to any of these well known problems. The book is written to those interested in math, and you don't need a phD to read this one. When he describe each problem, he went in depth to gently introduce the math concepts needed to understand the problem, without the rigorous stuff you see in a hardcore textbook. The concepts span from prime numbers to computer science to topology and other topics of interest. Great introductions throughout! I am still trying to grasp some ideas in the book. This book can be a great gift for math majors. I do have a slight complain though, he should have shown how the zeta function relates to prime numbers clearer.