Luke Heaton

I think another editing/rewriting pass could have made this an excellent book. As it is, I'm really glad I read it, but I'd put it in the 'ambitious but uneven' basket. A lot of ground is covered, most of it is interesting (even the more philosophical strands that run through the book and take over in the final chapter), and I think I learned a few things. You can tell that Heaton is really into this stuff and wants to share genuine understanding with the reader, not just show off his own knowledge. But I found some of the explanations unclear, and although that's partly down to my own weaknesses, I think it's also a flaw in the book: Heaton's way of explaining Turing machines, for example, was quite confusing to me, even though I've encountered the concept many times before and happily followed explanations that went at least as deep, if not deeper. There are quite a lot of typos (not so much misspellings as missing or misplaced words, wrong parts of speech, that sort of thing), which isn't a big deal in itself but suggests a lack of careful editing, which would also explain why the clarity and flow are rather uneven. Still, I enjoyed this and will definitely have a look at anything else Heaton publishes. Do note that although the title is accurate, there's a bit more emphasis on the 'mathematical thought', and a bit less on the 'history', than you might expect. That suited me well, though, as I'm squarely in the target audience for books pitched at mathematically ignorant (and only moderately intelligent) readers, but willing to make them think.… (altro)