How to bake [pi] - Eugenia Cheng

What is math? How exactly does it work? And what do three siblings trying to share a cake have to do with it? In How to Bake Pi, math professor Eugenia Cheng provides an accessible introduction to the logic and beauty of mathematics, powered, unexpectedly, by insights from the kitchen: we learn, for example, how the bchamel in a lasagna can be a lot like the number 5, and why making a good custard proves that math is easy but life is hard. Of course, it's not all about cooking; we'll also run the New York and Chicago marathons, take a closer look at St. Paul's Cathedral, pay visits to Cinderella and Lewis Carroll, and even get to the bottom of why we think of a tomato as a vegetable. At the heart of it all is Cheng's work on category theory, a cutting-edge mathematics of mathematics," that is about figuring out how math works. This is not the math of our high school classes: seen through category theory, mathematics becomes less about numbers and formulas and more about how we know, believe, and understand anything, including whether our brother took too much cake.

Many of us think that math is hard, but, as Cheng makes clear, math is actually designed to make difficult things easier. Combined with her infectious enthusiasm for cooking and a true zest for life, Cheng's perspective on math becomes this singular book: a funny, lively, and clear journey through a vast territory no popular book on math has explored before. How to Bake Pi offers a whole new way to think about a field all of us think we know; it will both dazzle the constant reader of popular mathematics and amuse and enlighten even the most hardened math-phobe.

So, what is math? Let's look for the answer in the kitchen.

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"[A] slyly illuminating dispatch on the deep meaning of mathematics.... Cheng manages to do for us what the mathematician Keith Devlin has said mathematicians do for themselves: she compels us to see numbers and symbols as vivid characters in an ongoing drama, a narrative in which we are alternately observers and participants." --Natalie Angier, The American Scholar

"[O]ften entertaining...frequently illuminating.... [How to Bake Pi] offers enough nourishment for the brain to chew on for a long time." --Columbus Dispatch

"Cheng never quite overeggs her metaphor of the mathematician as chef...and her tone is clear, clever and friendly. Even at her most whimsical she is rigorous and insightful. Potentially confusing ideas are expressed with a matter-of-fact simplicity.... How to Bake Pi is a welcome addition to the popular-math shelf, unusual not only because of its quirky premise but also because Cheng is a woman, a lucid and nimble expositor, and unashamedly proud of her domestic obsessions.... It would be wonderful if this book attracted a new audience to the field. And there's no better ambassador (or dinner-party host, I'd wager) than Eugenia Cheng." --Alex Bellos, New York Times Book Review

"Combined with infectious enthusiasm for cooking and a zest for life, Cheng's perspective on math becomes this singular book: a funny, lively, and clear journey no popular book on math has explored before. How to Bake Pi...will dazzle, amuse, and enlighten." --Gambit Weekly

"Invoking plenty of examples from cooking and baking, as well as other everyday-life situations such as calculating a taxi fare, searching for love through online dating services and training for a marathon, [Cheng] explains abstract mathematical ideas--including topology and logic--in understandable ways.... Her lively, accessible book demonstrates how important and intriguing such a pursuit can be." --Scientific American