No label defined (Q4552271)

This is an unabridged reprint of the original edition of 1983 -- it is even stated in the imprint that the book begins on p. iii and that no text has been omitted. (The Preface in the original edition had no pagination while in this reprint it carries the Roman pagination vii--x). The review of the 1983 edition in Zbl 0571.01001 contained a quote from the Preface about the motivation of the author (who teaches at the Open University at Milton Keynes) to publish this popular account: he intended to show ``that numbers have been at the centre of man's awareness of his surroundings'' since the earliest times and ``to collect together many of the ideas and techniques associated with numbers over the centuries so that parents and teachers may be stimulated to experiment with the way in which children are exposed to their mystery and excitement.'' The chapter headings illustrate this intention: Encountering Numbers; Counting with Numbers; Writing down Numbers; Calculating with Numbers (from elementary operations to logarithms); Computing with Numbers (from counting boards to computers); Unknown Numbers (a historically oriented elementary introduction to the solution of equations); Recreational Numbers (number puzzles, magic squares, figurate numbers); Thinking about Numbers (classification of numbers); Teaching and Learning of Numbers. In the final chapter the author states: ``If \(\ldots\) numbers are made a genuine source of adventure and exploration from the beginning [of a child's encounter with numbers], there is a good chance that the level of numeracy in society can be raised significantly.'' Flegg's book is a worthy contribution towards this goal. Scholars may regret that this popular presentation does not contain footnotes or references to sources, apart from a rudimentary bibliography of 12 titles (some of them without date) and five texts published by the Open University. This is the one unfortunate feature of this reprint -- that the bibliography was not updated to reflect the considerable literature on the subject of numbers that has appeared since 1983.