Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea

Whoa. This book appealed to the science/math geek in me. Less than 200 pages long, I found Zero to be mostly interesting. I read it quickly after all. For the most part, this book was fairly easy to understand but I may have gotten lost in a few places (like string theory and set theory for example – and I'm pretty sure I understood the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle). For the record, it's the ancient Babylonians who are credited with inventing zero, although the Mayans used it too. Sort of. This book touches on many different zero-related subjects such as: Pythagoras (a bit of a tyrant), the golden ratio, Zeno's paradox, the kabbalah, God, calculus, infinity (zero's “twin”), absolute zero, quantum mechanics, the elusive M-theory (a.k.a. the Theory of Everything), gravity potentials, black holes, worm holes, time travel, the Big Bang, and how to prove that Winston Churchill is a carrot. To name a few. Basically, as I understand it, the whole universe started with zero. (I can picture Pinto from Animal House discussing this book with a doobie in hand.) I also have a pretty good idea of how the universe will end. (I'll give you a hint: we're all either going to burn or freeze. Care to guess?)