A joyful and intimate celebration of the beauty and creativity of algebra from one of the foremost math educators of our time.

For many of us, algebra conjures up memories of dull classes spent wondering when we’d ever have to solve a system of equations or factor a polynomial. Indeed, most of the time, if we need to plan a budget or figure out how early to leave the house for work, common sense or a quick, seat-of-the-pants approximation is good enough.

But as mathematician Paul Lockhart argues in The Mending of Broken Bones, once we stop thinking of algebra in terms of its practical applications, we can appreciate it for the beautiful and gratifying subject that it is. In his hands, algebra is the delicate craft of untangling numerical puzzles to reveal the hidden patterns and often surprising behaviors of the numbers themselves. As Lockhart traverses numerical systems, slips into and out of higher-dimensional space, and delights in the intimate connections between algebra and geometry, we come to see the discipline from his viewpoint: not as the mundane exercises of our school years, but instead as an art form whose beauty lies in its elegant simplicity.

Written in Lockhart’s charming and conversational prose, The Mending of Broken Bones is an impassioned and deeply personal celebration of algebra that helps us experience the profound joys of mathematical discovery.

Paul Lockhart is the author of Arithmetic, Measurement, and A Mathematician’s Lament. After a career as a research mathematician at Brown University and the University of California, Santa Cruz, he spent two decades teaching algebra at Saint Ann’s School in Brooklyn.