No comments about Investigating School Mathematics: Workbook [3].

No comments about Wiskunde en samenleving in historisch perspectief.

2 comments about M.C. Escher: Visions of Symmetry - Notebooks, Periodic Drawings and Related Work.

1. It is most gratifying to note that at large, it is a professor of Mathematics who was inspired to collect the materials and compile this most penetrating study on the works of M. C. Escher. That professor is Dr. Doris Schattschneider and her latest publication "M. C. Escher : Visions of Symmetry" is a life's labour of love at collecting, classifying and indexing the works of M. C. Escher in a single volume. The book opens with a stunning photograph of M. C. Escher and a penetrating one-page foreword by Douglas R. Hofstadter.
   
   Who then is M. C. Escher and what is his global appeal? Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898-1972) was a Dutch graphic and wood-cut artist, who for decades working in isolation, single handedly produced the most haunting, fascinating and intriguing works of tesselation, the kind, the world had not seen before. His obsession with visual patterns built by the intricate interlocking of shapes that repeat and repeat forever, filling every crack in the regular plane, made it almost into a visual poetry. What is remarkable is that an artist single handedly learned by himself, the mathematical laws of the plane symmetry group including all it's isometries (i.e. translations, rotations, reflections and glide reflections) as he produced year after year patterns with interlocking shapes of unmatched beauty and provocation. He saw symmetry and beauty where others saw only a senseless repetiton. One can spend hours describing the various feelings brought out by a single image, suffice to say it would require a multi volume encyclopedia to describe in detail all that is collected in this single tome. I am flabbergasted that this book sells on the internet for as low as US $11.00. It is worth it's weight in precious diamonds. Thanks a million Doris, for doing such amicable justice to a great artist, and for providing us such a timeless treasure.



2. Make no mistake. This isn't a comprehensive book for the Escher fan who wants to look at all his pretty pictures. It is a highly academic (no problem there, unless you're looking for, like I said, pretty pictures) book that focuses on basic patterns. It doesn't have many of the drawings that introduced me to his work in the first place. It's not the coffee-table book I was looking for, but that's my problem. It does have volumes of text for the so-inclined.

No comments about Accounting for Growth: Information Systems and the Creation of the Large Corporation.

No comments about Lecons d'a-peu-pres.

No comments about A Century of Measurement: An Illustrated History of the National Physical Laboratory.

No comments about Mathematical Perspectives: Essays on Mathematics and Its Historical Development.

No comments about A short history of Greek mathematics.

No comments about History of Mathematics in Hungary Until the 20th Century.

No comments about Mathematical Discovery, Volume II, On Understanding, Learning, and Teaching Problem Solving.