by Kate Kitagawa and Timothy Revell
Morrow, 2023
This review was first published by Booklist in July 2023.
**STARRED REVIEW** The history of math is typically taught from an exclusively Greco-Eurocentric perspective as a parade of great men. This significantly distorts reality. Mathematics has been invented in one form or another by every culture on Earth, and the exclusion of women and people of color from traditional narratives is particularly glaring. Kitagawa and Revell do an excellent job of broadening our view to the far more vibrant, collaborative, diverse, and interesting history. Different cultures developed the same ideas at different times, and there is no one inventor of any given idea. The foundations of calculus were discovered by mathematicians in India centuries before Newton or Leibniz were even born, for example, and binary notation has roots in the traditional hexagrams of the Chinese Book of Changes. The mathematics of different cultures were driven by different needs and values, and some of our biggest mathematical revolutions were fueled when these different traditions encountered and altered each other. Math, like all human endeavors, has been subject to politics, religious and cultural influences, and struggles for power and wealth. Mathematics is the most powerful tool humans ever invented, and this book is a welcome corrective to our understanding of how it came to be.
John the Librarian 