This book is based on a BBC documentary on the same topic which I watched back in 2011 when my friend Fabián was visiting St Andrews for the first time. Last year, also while visiting St Andrews, he gave me this book as a present.
What is interesting about this book (and, also the documentary) is that it achieves something that, in my opinion, had been missing in other places. What I mean is: John and Hank Green have YouTube shows where they explain various subjects from the humanities and the sciences with entertaining factoids. They conspicuously do not have a show on mathematics. To be fair, it would appear to be far more challenging to have a show on mathematics. But it is precisely because of that reason that this book is remarkable, because it is a very entertaining book that aims to explain pure mathematics with a narrative full of factoids. Oddly enough, I thought the documentary was slightly better than the book.
