The Pythagorean Theorem: The Story of Its Power and Beauty

Posamentier (mathematics education, City College of New York, emeritus) is passionate about numbers. He communicates this love and delight in his exploration of the one theorem almost everyone can remember: the square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. Posamentier takes the well-known fact and shows what can be done with it, from building pyramids to designing fractals. He also presents the story of Pythagoras, which may or may not be myth, and the discovery of the Pythagorean Theorem by many ancient societies. One of the pleasures he finds is the many ways that the theorem can be proved. Pythagoras is at the base of trigonometry and music among many other things. In an afterword, Herbert Hauptman explains the ultimately Pythagorean source of the work that led to his Nobel Prize in chemistry. Appendices show representations of Pythagoras and his theorem in art, list many proofs and provide a table of Pythagorean triples. Annotation 穢2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)