Another good one, full of more topography and obscure number theories that are interesting to read about, but for me, not to ponder. I was delighted to discover that one of my favorite Abbott and Costello routines (involving dividing 28 by 7 and getting 13), predated them by a decade, first appearing in 1928. I was also delighted to see Gardner's skewering of supply-side economics and the Laffer curve. He likened it to Immanuel Velikovksy's nuttiness, and quoted leading economists who referred to it as ""a relatively sophisticated form of fraud", "snake oil", "punk economics", and "excess rhetorical baggage". And yet, idiots are still thinking giving the wealthy more money is a good thing...for the non-wealthy.

More geometries, i-ching , paradoxes and an interesting chapter on elevators. That man certainly had broad scope in recreational mathematics. ( )

I've read many of Martin Gardner's collections of expanded columns from Scientific American and enjoyed this more than any, with the possible exception of the real joy I got on discovering the first of them in my teens many years ago. I think that enjoyment is heightened by having read much of Gardner's other writing in the intervening years and coming to know more about the extent to which he is a self-taught expert - a journalist of his many subjects.

Highlights for me in this collection are the chapters on Coincidence, Newcomb's Paradox, Crossing Numbers, Elevators and Doughnuts, Linked and Knotted. Also worthy of special mention are his essays on Napier's Bones and Napier's Abacus, which showed me that I knew a lot less about these subjects than I thought I did, and that on Waring's Problems, one of those classes of number problems that are easy to describe and incredibly challenging to approach to even the best number theorists. And there's a final gem, printed out of sequence - his final column for Scientific American which tears to shreds the nonsense behind many economic theories but most specifically that behind the Laffer Curve. The controlled rage of a man angry at seeing a nation being destroyed by pseudo-science has rarely been better expressed and is a remarkable contrast to the joy of discovery and invention that is usually seen in his columns.

A collection of gems, worthy of many revisits. ( )

More of Gardner at his best! Games, puzzles, and fun, engaging presentations of all sorts of mathematics. ( )