Ben Orlin makes the interesting observation that the majority of people give up on understanding maths at some point, from fractions or algebra all the way through to tensors. At that stage they either give up entirely or operate the maths mechanically without understanding what they are doing. In this light-hearted take, Orlin does a great job of taking on mathematical processes a step at a time, in part making parallels with the structure of language. Many popular maths books shy away from the actual mathematical representations, going instead for verbal approximations. Orlin doesn't do this, but makes use of those linguistic similes and different ways of looking at the processes involved to help understanding. He also includes self-admittedly awful (but entertaining) drawings and stories from his experience as a long-time maths teacher. To make those parallels, Orlin refers to numbers as nouns, operations as verbs (though he points out that there are some flaws in this simile) a

Pedro Domingos (@pmddomingos) is a renowned AI researcher, tech industry insider, and Professor Emeritus of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington. Hs most recent book is 2040: A Silicon Valley Satire . Why AI?  AI is the defining technology of our time. Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, is not kidding when he says that AI could be bigger than fire or the wheel. Using and governing AI is going to be a central part of our lives, jobs, politics and culture from now on. Why this book? Every one of us needs to understand AI and the issues surrounding it. Not at the level of an expert, but enough to figure out what we can do with it, what we want from it, and how to get there. And after writing a non-fiction book and talking to people from all walks of life about it, I've come to the conclusion that the best way to communicate what AI really is is by writing a story that illustrates it. Also, so much in the tech world today, from the AI hype and fear to the pol

This is a UFO book with a difference. Unlike so many others, it wasn’t written by a ufologist or sceptic with a particular axe to grind, but by a professional historian whose personal interest in the subject only goes back a few years. While I’ve read numerous books and articles about ufology over the last 30-plus years, this is the first time I’ve encountered such an in-depth account by an ‘outsider’. This in itself makes the book noteworthy – as does Eghigian’s studiously impartial approach, presenting developments in chronological order with virtually no analysis or commentary of his own. That’s quite a novelty in this field – but also, as I’ll explain at the end, something of a weakness. The first two-thirds of the book deals with what I think of as the ‘standard history’ of ufology, covering the same basic highlights that you might find in any account of the subject’s evolution and scope prior to the 1970s. From the first major ‘phantom airship’ scares of the late 19th century, th