""There’s nothing more enlightening than a view of life’s nuances as seen through the lens of a mathematician. Especially when that mathematician is John Allen Paulos, a brilliant educator who persistently empowers the reader to think in ways that render transparent much of what is opaque in the world around us.” ?NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON, Astrophysicist, American Museum of Natural History “A Numerate Life is the engaging history of a mathematical mind. As always, John Paulos displays his genius for making the abstract and abstruse entirely intuitive.” —SYLVIA NASAR, author of A Beautiful Mind “A quirky and surprisingly poignant book about the struggle to make sense of one’s own life story. With the help of logic and statistical reasoning, Paulos shines a light on the paradoxes and delusions that so often bedevil our remembrance of things past. Where Proust had his madeleine, Paulos has math.” —STEVEN STROGATZ, professor of mathematics, Cornell University, and author of The Joy of X “American editor Ellery Sedgwick wrote once that ‘autobiographies ought to begin with Chapter Two.’ I believe that had he read A Numerate Life, he would have agreed that Chapter One is no less fascinating than any other chapter in this wonderful book. Paulos’s life is a rich tapestry embroidered with mathematical gems.” —MARIO LIVIO, astrophysicist, author of Brilliant Blunders and The Golden Ratio “In this gripping page-turner, John Allen Paulos surprises us once again, with a ‘memoir’ like no other memoir. He may not have made, as he claims, any ‘seminal contributions’ to mathematics, but his impact on ‘meta-mathematics,’ and the interface of math with the real world, far surpasses that of any single living mathematician. You will never be able to read biographies the same way again, since this is not yet-another-memoir, but a thought-provoking, path-breaking, ‘meta-memoir’ and even ‘anti-memoir.’” —DORON ZEILBERGER, Board of Governors professor of Mathematics, Rutgers University, and winner of the Leroy P. Steele Prize and the Euler Medal in Mathematics