I’d like to announce the publication (or imminent publication) of the two books I worked on last year. Neither of them is a chess book, so they may or may not be of interest to readers of this blog. But just in case you’re interested, here is where you can get them:
What’s Happening in the Mathematical Sciences, Vol. 7 is the latest volume in the AMS’s roughly biannual series that explains current discoveries in mathematics in language that (hopefully) everyone can follow. It consists of nine chapters, each 12 to 16 pages long, covering such topics as:
- invisibility cloaks
- how you can ensure at least a 51 percent chance of winning any coin toss
- “the book that time couldn’t erase” — a manuscript of Archimedes that was erased with acid, overwritten, had pages ripped out, other pages covered with gold leaf, and nearly every page attacked by mold … yet has still been deciphered by researchers using X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy.
All of these have to do with mathematics, believe me! If you are interested, you can order the book from the AMS at a fantastic introductory price of $9.95, through the end of January (2009). When is the last time you bought a math book for less than $10???
Visualizing Geology, 2nd edition is a freshman geology textbook that will be published soon by John Wiley & Sons. As some of you may know, I co-wrote the first edition with real geologists Brian Skinner of Yale and Barbara Murck of the University of Toronto. (I am not a real geologist, or any kind of geologist at all — but I can write.) The book features lots of new and old photographs from the National Geographic, and updates on things like the Sichuan earthquake of 2008. Okay, I know that no readers of this blog are likely to go out and buy it… but if you’re at a university with a geology department, maybe you could just mention that you know this great writer who has written a first-year geology text…  😎
Unfortunately I don’t have a web link to VG 2nd ed. yet, but it should be up at the Wiley website by the end of the month, I would think.
Finally, if any of you are interested, I have also updated my static web page to announce the new books.
Sorry about the blatant advertising! I’ll get back to chess in my next post.
