Zelda King

This is a great little book that I read that gives a brief history of the numbers we use today. The book shows how Hindu-Arabic numerals seeped into Europe and replace the Roman Numerals. The end of the book asks the reader to think about all of the history involved with these symbols when we use the numbers we have today. Thank goodness most of the world uses the same numbers!

My copy of the book is very thin and uses earthy colors of yellow and red. I think the colors fit the landscapes from which these numbers originated. I felt like I was in the Middle East while reading it. Does that make sense? Boxes and sidebars contained examples of ancient written numerals as well as related information from their origins. The background of each page was a matrix of ancient numerals acting as a base.

The book contained a glossary, but no bibliography. Many of the origins cannot be accurately pinned down. The photographs and illustrations were representative of the subject, but I would have liked to see a better representation of the metal type used in a 1450 A.D. printer. The photograph used on page 21 looks like modern type blocks.

Altogether, this is a really good brief history of how we came to use our numbers.… (meer)