| An Imaginary Tale: The Story of "i" [the square root of minus one]: The Story of "I" (the Square Root of Minus One) | ![An Imaginary Tale: The Story of i [the square root of minus one]: The Story of I (the Square Root of Minus One)](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51EdpS4WaIL._SL160_.jpg)
 enlarge | Author: Paul J. Nahin
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Category: Book
List Price: £9.95
Buy New: £4.56
You Save: £5.39 (54%)
New (37) Used (8) from £4.56
Avg. Customer Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 20695
Media: Paperback
Edition: New Ed
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.8
ISBN: 0691127980
Dewey Decimal Number: 515.9
EAN: 9780691127989
ASIN: 0691127980
Publication Date: January 2, 2007
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand New. Shipped from UK Mainland. Delivery is usually 2 - 3 working days from order by Royal Mail, International Delivery is by Airmail.
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| Customer Reviews:
Good, but you have to work at reading it February 8, 2008
If I had never read any of Eli Maor's excellent books I would have scored this book as 5 stars. It is a very good book that guides you through a series of difficult mathematical concepts without being a textbook. It is very readable, but it is peppered with 'roadblocks' where you suddenly have to pay a lot more attention, and possibly re-read sections, before you can proceed. It also, despite being a new 'bugs removed' edition, has at least one grammatical error which makes a paragraph hard to follow.
Having said all that, it really is a very good book. It is just that I have been spoiled by Eli Maor's books, which cover similar ground (trigonometry, e) in a similar way (history, characters, mathematical ideas, related concepts), but manage to make it an effortless joy for the reader. This book somehow never became a joy to read.
 Disappointing presentation of the material October 14, 2002
11 out of 12 found this review helpful
I read this book on the back of having just finished Eli Maor's excellent "To infinity and beyond". Unlike Maor's book, "An imaginary tale" is poorly written and presented. While Maor has a fluid and engrossing writing style, Nahin is much less convincing. The material is all there, but it's the presentation with which I have a problem. It's not all bad -- the chapter on the geometry of i is well done, for example, but that's the exception rather than the rule. Another problem is the poor quality of the diagrams. Cubic curves are hastily drawn freehand. Right angled triangles don't always have right angles, and so on. On the whole, I came away with an impression of a book with lots of potential, but most of it left unrealised.
 Eulogy August 23, 1999
13 out of 16 found this review helpful
I rate this book as one of the three best general mathematical books that I have ever bought. Its style is clear and light and the scope of the mathematics is breathtaking; I learnt a great deal from it and saw explained some hard ideas in a very readable way. Not every question is answered but as the author says it isn't a text book. If you want to get into complex analysis and learn about its development and the geniuses who have been involved in it I can think of no better path to take-but you will need to work at some bits! The author avoids actually defining complex numbers in a rigorous way and I would have liked to have seen them defined somewhere as ordered pairs of reals with a reasonable definition of addition and a funny definition of multiplication, with i simply a change of notation. Not easy to fit into the historical development but worth an appendix.Buy the book. If you don't like it I reckon the problem's with you!
Fantastic! Thorough, scholarly, interesting! March 6, 1999
11 out of 12 found this review helpful
This is an excellent, beautiful book! Just the section on Kepler's laws is worth the price of the book (hardcover to boot!)If you like math, if you are willing to spend a bit of time understanding the wonderful results -- get it! Some calculus background needed -- nothing beyond high school. The book goes well beyond providing a narrative on the history of "square root of -1". It actually shows in complete detail how to use "i" to do wonderful things. Along the way the author provides the important historical events and plenty of notes and references for anyone interested in getting some more. It is clear the author took his time to research and study the subject. He has presented it well, thouroghly, and in an interesting way -- without sacrificing detail!
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