Kepler's Conjecture: How Some of the Greatest Minds in History Helped Solve One of the Oldest Math Problems in the World NAIBA Book of the Year for Nonfiction (2018) and the Illusion of Transparency--is

and the Illusion of Transparency--is like a psychology course with all the boring parts taken out

203 miles of levees that attempt to straitjacket the Mississippi River

At seven minutes past midnight

anchored around stories rather than mathematics

The surprising answers Pollan offers to the simple question posed by this book have profound political

Kepler's Conjecture: How Some of the Greatest Minds in History Helped Solve One of the Oldest Math Problems in the World NAIBA Book of the Year for Nonfiction (2018) and the Illusion of Transparency--isThe fascinating story of a problem that perplexed mathematicians for nearly 400 years. In 1611, Johannes Kepler proposed that the best way to pack spheres as densely as possible was to pile them up in the same way that grocers stack oranges or tomatoes. This proposition, known as Kepler's Conjecture, seemed obvious to everyone except mathematicians, who seldom take anyone's word for anything. In the tradition of Fermat's Enigma, George Szpiro shows