Ebook: Doing Mathematics: Convention, Subject, Calculation, Analogy

When one attempts to write an expository presentation, one should try to write clearly, directly, and in the simplest language possible. This book does not succeed in that endeavor. Rather, the author is to me a model of obfuscation, arcane language, wandering threads of reference, obscure relationships, and opaque explanation.

Perhaps a philospher who likes to couch his writings in such wrapping would relate to this style of presentation, but certainly not a reader interested in how mathematicians actually do mathematics. I would assume that rules out professional mathematicians by default. In some ways this could have been a good book, if the author had been less interested in showing us how much obscura he knows and more in explaining in a truly understandable fashion how people do mathematics .

A reader who is looking for insights into mathematicians and their methods would not go far wrong reading Hardy's A Mathematician's Apology, or Littlewoood's Miscellany.