Only Tony Shalub’s voice saves the audiobook of W. Rouse Bell’s A Short Account of Mathematics from being truly awful.
Let’s start with the book’s lack of understanding of audience. The author includes several example equations, purportedly to illustrate math concepts. Those are not clear to readers/listeners who are unfamiliar with the concepts in the first place. That is, for the less initiated, the connections are not clear. So much space is taken up with these examples, that the concept of a “history” is lost. I suppose that since this book is in the “sleep” area of Audible’s selections, that the purpose of these examples is to induce drowsiness.
Second, each time the author mentions religion, he points out that the mathematician is WRONG, not really showing the same emphasis for being incorrect on secular mathematicians. I’ll trust that the author is accurate, but the writing implies wrongness because of a connection to religion or faith, instead of pointing out the context of such errors or that several believing mathematicians may have accepted the error and improved upon it. This is what rational thought is supposed to do: correct mistakes and build upon what has been learned. The author does not appear to allow for this possibility.
