The Equation That Couldn't Be Solved

I really, really wanted to be able to give this four stars, but it kind-of loses the plot part-way through. Great historical information on symmetry and clearly the author is passionate and well-researched, but, as a book, it just felt a bit disjointed.

Perhaps if you approached it like you were going to take an entire semester to learn the topic (and were willing to do some outside research or pause for a while between chapters to try and apply some of the knowledge), it might be a better read, but that's a somewhat particular method.

Overall, I give it 3.5 stars for being very interesting and summarizing quite a bit from one particular perspective, which is very interesting, and for humanizing a few very clever individuals who died young, but not without making great contributions. These are noble things for a book to do, so if the topic interests you, check it out, you'll probably enjoy many parts of it.