Writers generally put the motivation statement at the front of the book, but this occurs at the back. His anger does indeed fuel part of his need to write, and is one of the reasons why he succeeds but not fully. A moments reflection reveals that many books, of all types, are not motivated by anger at all. I am sure that in a calm moment he would appreciate the economy of the refutation 'NOT' appended to the first sentence of his statement. The question it raises is, can he justify his anger as righteous and thereby redeem it, like a mathematical cleansing of the temple? Or do we read the book with respect for his position and experience, but gingerly, lest we disturb a dog best left sleeping?
I like this book for the human-ness of its strengths and weaknesses. Published in 1988, it is fresh and contemporary, of course the math can never date, but his applications and examples have not dated either. As an experienced and passionate teacher of mathematics the professor has some valuable insights into the art and science of maths teaching. 'Math anxiety' and the 'extreme intellectual lethargy which affects a small but growing number of students' all concern him, as they do me. (My own small experiences in this area as a tutor and in the classroom echo his. He might also add the 'trained ability to concentrate' as a fundament of doing math - and perhaps all intellection.) He badly wants us all to gain an instinctive sense of number and master its huge array of applications in sorting the wheat from the chaff in life's great information silo. The cheap, slap-happy and sensationalist reporting of the media, astrology, quackery, pseudoscience, and the jiggery-pokery-statistics of governments all come under his sharp scrutiny. His sense of humour, wit, and selection of amusing quotations leaven the text throughout.
Some embedded gems: sections such as those on combinatorial co-efficients (how the lottery works), and binomial probability (how to test for ESP) are good, but they really are a little too brief, and use examples which are more difficult than need be. These repay careful re-reading and require expansion with one's own pencil and paper - which enforced exercise is not his intent in writing. As he himself notes, he has a weakness for being overly concise when writing, his symbolic math habits being so strong. As an author, he should try to avoid statements like 'this part can be ignored, as indeed can the whole book'...counsels of despair! And he also promises not to lecture us or patronise us in this book, as he is aware of the temptation to do so in this type of work: mostly he succeeds. For something lighter you could try 'Why Do Buses Come In Threes?' by Eastaway & Wyndham. For something a little more rigorous try 'How to Solve It' by Polya, or 'Reasoning with Statistics' by Williams & Monge'. Keith Devlin's 'The Maths Gene' is good for some psychology of math.
