Personal Info: I am a college math/stats instructor. I use UNIX that comes with the Mac OS X operating system.

I purchased this book about a year and a half ago. I've gradually worked through most of the book, not necessarily in the order the chapters were written. I learned a great deal about shell scripts and UNIX in general. I would highly recommend this book to someone who has been introduced to UNIX and would like to learn more of the shell and how to write scripts. There is also a very good introductory chapter on the language awk. I've been able to implement several awk programs (some one-liners, some contained in their own script) to accomplish various tasks.

I wish to echo the comments of all the previous reviewers. This is a delightful book!

Subjects such as elasticity of materials quickly bog down in mathematical detail and in the process of learning the subject, the student or interested person may quickly lose touch with what they're actually trying to grasp. This book is mostly a nonmathematical treatment (there are only a handful of mathematical formulas, chemistry equations and graphs throughout the book) which describes in a practical way what really happens with materials. Of course a deep understanding of this topic requires the full mathematical treatment, but this book certainly makes the subject accessible and engaging to anyone interested in the question "Why Don't You Fall Through the Floor?"

I agree with the reviewer who felt this is the kind of book that an undergraduate engineering, physics or applied mathematics student should read along with the more technical textbooks when first introduced to the subject of behavior of materials.

I purchased and read this book in my last year as an undergraduate student majoring in mathematics. I've read it three or four times over the last fifteen years and have thoroughly enjoyed it each time. As a history of mathematics, it was both insightful and entertaining. I would highly recommend it!

I am delighted to find this book available for sale. I lost my copy several years ago and have missed it immensely. This is a delightful collection of science fiction stories and poems all with the common property that they use mathematics of some kind as their theme. Some stories are very funny, others are thought provoking and at least one is quite touching. They're all entertaining. You probably won't learn much mathematics from these stories (mathematicians are warned in the forward to stay away), but if you're the least bit interested in mathematics, you will find them enchanting. I highly recommend this book - its a gem!