I don’t know whether it’s due to some paucity in my education, a natural curiosity, or a sort of intellectual masochism (or all three), but I’ve occasionally sought out books about topics that often don’t agree with my brain yet still fascinate me. Being free from the shackles of syllabus reading (however instructional and edifying it often was) has allowed me to dabble in whatever topics I want, leading me down educational pathways I rarely dared to traverse before. I’m thinking specifically about math, science, and the other non-writing disciplines I failed to grasp or hone throughout my structured education.
The Joy of x by Steven Strogatz, a mathematician, is my most recent addition to this “continuing education” subgenre of my reading, and a delightful one. Dubbed “a guided tour of math,” this collection of bite-sized surveys paints key mathematical domains like Numbers, Shapes, and Data in broad strokes, simplified enough for English majors like me to understand them yet dense enough to require complete attention and critical thinking. I view Jennifer Ouellette’s splendid Black Bodies and Quantum Cats in the same league: right-brained books written for left-brainers, gateway drugs to some deeper, weirder stuff that should only be handled by professionals.
And I’m happy to leave that stuff to people like Strogatz (or his counterpart in astrophysics: Neil deGrasse Tyson), who are adept at communicating the importance and often invisible influence of the heady material they study to laypeople like me. The more books like The Joy of x and Black Bodies that are out there on library shelves and bookstores and talk shows, the more likely their subject matter gets the sympathy and support it needs. Though I came from the humanities, I also want STEM to get all the love it needs.