BOOK OF WONDERS: The Many Lives of Euclid's Elements

Euclid's Elements of Geometry was a book that changed the world. In a sweeping history, Benjamin Wardhaugh traces how an ancient Greek text on mathematics, often hailed as the world's first textbook, shaped 2,000 years of art, philosophy and literature, as well as science and maths. 13 volumes of mathematical definitions, propositions and proofs, writing in 300 BC, Euclid could not have known his logic would go unsurpassed until the 19th century and that he was laying down the very foundations of human knowledge. This volume offers a vibrant history of mathematics, told through people and invention and also a broader story of culture with stories from every continent, ranging between Ptolemy and Isaac Newton, Hobbes and Lewis Carroll, from Ancient Greece to medieval Byzantium, early modern China, Renaissance Italy, the age of European empires and our world today, and how geometry has sat at the beating heart of sculpture, literature, music and thought. We go to the workshops of Restoration London, from the Jesuit mission in China, to the artisans of medieval Baghdad and meet artists, philosophers, teachers, playwrights, painters, poets and more in this brilliant feat of storytelling. 400 magnificent pages, illustrated. William Collins first edition 2020.