Will I love The Nothing That is?

This book on nothing and zero by a professor of mathematics provides an introduction to the history and applications of my favorite number zero. It is entertaining as well as posing provocative questions folks like me ponder “Why is there something rather than nothing?”

It is a book that effortlessly blends high and complex mathematical concepts with their historical and philosophical routes. A great read for those interested in exploring the meaning of nothing.

I find this book on the history of zero intriguing, and the contradiction embodied in its opening title captures a concept that is at once attractive and problematic.

This book, atypically opening with a chapter titled "Zero," and delightfully creative in other ways, presents historical concepts of zero not only as refreshingly non-linear, being termed anywhere from afterthoughts to casual alterations, rather than natural or logical progressions, but also as cross-cultural, involving Eastern Sumerians and Indian traditions and Western Greeks and European traditions, significantly in parallel, not as temporal or geographical extensions of each other.