Those are all kind of old, except the Gardner stuff which has fairly well stood the test of time. I'd recommend QUADRIVIUM by Miranda Lundy, Dr. Jason Martineau et al. ISBN 0802778135, 416 pages hardcover. Gamow kind of messed up my understanding of the Continuum Hypothesis, and I kind of think we can do much better with newer books. On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 19:44, Richard Guy <rkg@cpsc.ucalgary.ca> wrote:
A modest suggestion: Conway & Guy, The Book of Numbers. R.
On Wed, 22 Feb 2012, Eugene Salamin wrote:
Hall & Knight, "Higher Algebra".
Coxeter, "Introduction to Geometry".
Birkhoff & MacLane, "Survey of Modern Algebra".
Thomas, "Calculus and Analytic Geometry".
Gamow, "One, Two, Three, Infinity", has some nice math, but some of the physics and astronomy is out of date. Plus other books by Gamow. These should be the easiest reading among the books I've listed here.
Max Born, "Atomic Physics".
Pauling, "General Chemistry".
Also, look through the book catalogs of MAA and Dover Publications.
-- Gene
______________________________**__
From: Dan Asimov <dasimov@earthlink.net> To: math-fun <math-fun@mailman.xmission.com**> Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2012 1:31 PM Subject: [math-fun] Suggestions requested for a recreational math book for a bright 15-year-old
A bright friend of mine just turned 15. They are rather advanced in math for their age and a good chess-player.
At age 12 I was ecstatic to receive the first book in Martin Gardner's series of collected columns, around 1959. My friend has not seen anything by Gardner yet, so those are the first thing that comes to mind. Yet I wonder if at this point they might seem somewhat dated.
All suggestions and opinions welcome.
--Dan
-- Robert Munafo -- mrob.com Follow me at: gplus.to/mrob - fb.com/mrob27 - twitter.com/mrob_27 - mrob27.wordpress.com - youtube.com/user/mrob143 - rilybot.blogspot.com