Ron Peters's Reviews > A Divine Language: Learning Algebra, Geometry, and Calculus at the Edge of Old Age

“Unless one has exercised one’s mind seriously at the gymnasium of mathematics one is incapable of precise thought, which amounts to saying that one is good for nothing.” Simone Weil quoted in Wilkinson (2022, p. 4)

If true, this is a terrible thought for me because I was a serial failure in mathematics throughout my schooling. I picked this book up because I’m a senior citizen who’s been afraid of math since Grade Four, when my teacher was Miss Rogers, whose one and only teaching method was humiliation. On and off since then, I’ve thought about trying to teach myself what I missed, but I’ve never done it.

You’re certainly led to think that this book is about a senior citizen learning math, but it is only so in a small part. It’s a book that might have made a good, short New Yorker article but it was self-indulgent to make it into a book. At this length, it is unbearably digressive and repetitious. I really dislike authors who read too much tangential material while doing their research and then feel compelled to include it all in their book. Not recommended.