A wonderfully accessible exploration of numbers and mathematics

Ian Stewart has carved out a niche for himself as by far the leading populariser for maths in this country in a series of successful books. Structured on the image of a maze representing the network of connected mathematical ideas that have proved so powerful and effective in understanding the natural world, his new book is an expansion and development of his 1997 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures. It will expand very considerably on the subject matter of the lectures, covering the topics of the lectures - number, probability, game theory, patterns and oscillators - as well as knots, computability, chaos and other topics.