A very impressive book in multiple ways. It's a bit mind-blowing at times, and it's written for anyone interested in learning something new. Padilla goes places the average (and even above average) person goes, and does so with personality and flare. Good stuff. Recommended.

I really appreciate the free review copy!!

** Thanks to NetGalley, Antonio Padilla, and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for this ARC. Fantastic Numbers and Where to Find Them: A Cosmic Quest from Zero to Infinity is out now. **

This was a fascinating, accessible book about physics told through numbers. Padilla is a theoretical physicist and cosmologist at The University of Nottingham, with a clear passion for the deep beauty of numbers and physics. Sometimes books written by academics are inaccessible to the average reader, but Padilla manages to be thorough and expansive while also being easily understandable. He uses wonderful metaphors and his conversational writing style makes it feel as though you are just discusses the secrets of the universe with a friend.

I love a good physics book and this was one of my favorites.

At one point in the children’s novel “The Phantom Tollbooth,” its protagonist, Milo, sets out to reach infinity. When he abandons the quest as hopeless, he is advised “Infinity is a poor place.”

“Fantastic Numbers and Where to Find Them: A Cosmic Quest from Zero to Infinity,” by Antonio Padilla, holds a different view. As the author shows, infinity can be terrifying, but it is filled with an endless amount of numbers.

This is not a book just about numbers. It is about the relationship between numbers and physics, and how the world works at both the largest and the smallest scales. The numbers Padilla examines are fantastic in two senses. They are so extreme as to challenge belief and they are so extravagant as to seem fancy. And they define how the universe works.

Padilla goes to extremes. The first third of the book deals with big numbers, while the second third examines small numbers. The third section, Infinity, wraps everything up, including a discussion on the theory of everything.

He presents a slew of curious numbers. He introduces readers to the googol (that is how it is spelled) and the googolplex. A googol is a one followed by 100 zeros. A googolplex is a googol to the googolth power. It is not the largest number he discusses. He introduces Graham’s number, a number so large it is impossible to write it out before the universe ends – even if you write it barely under light speed.

At the other end of the scale, he looks at zero and the numbers close to it. He presents the history of zero. (It turns out many philosophers and scientists really hated it.) He looks at several numbers barely greater than zero and shows why these seemingly insignificant values determine our destiny.

He also takes readers on a trip through the extreme ends of modern physics. This includes chapters that venture to the edge of the universe, and chapters examining the smallest particles possible. He also shows how much physics has changed in the last fifty years.

There is math involved. Readers with technical training will be better able to follow Padilla’s discussions than those who abandoned mathematics at their first opportunity in high school. Even engineers may have difficulty following everything. Yet “Fantasic Numbers” is worth reading even if you do not grasp everything perfectly. It is an entertaining and informative book, with a high “wow” factor.

Fantastic Numbers and Where to Find Them is a genuinely fascinating look at numbers, physics, and the nature of reality curated and facilitated by Dr. Antonio Padilla. Released 26th July by Macmillan on their Farrar, Straus and Giroux imprint, it's 352 pages and is available in hardcover, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links and references throughout. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.

This book is absolutely bursting with personality. Dr. Padilla *loves* numbers, and math, and really wants to share the love with everyone. Many (most) mathematics and physics books, even those accessible to the average layperson, presuppose at least some affinity with the subject matter. I think of it as "preaching to the choir". Not so this book. The author explains things in such a way as to make them accessible and understandable to almost anyone. There are no long and arduous proofs to work through (though he does give copious notes and there's enough meat and rigor to satisfy actual maths/physics folks). He explains quite complex theory in a fun way.

Books like this one are a tragedy for me personally in some ways because a long time ago, there was an academic split and I took the road more traveled - toward a life of professional bionerdery and away from the more crystalline forests of physics and mathematics. When I read books like this one (and when I revisit Feynman's Lectures, as I do once every few years) it fills me with a nostalgic wistfulness about not following physics more earnestly.

Maths and physics certainly *can* and *should* be engaging and fun. This is a good book. I would recommend it for maths/physics interested adults or older teenagers or *very* engaged younger readers. If 12 year old me had had a copy, I might not be a bioengineer today.

Language and spelling are British English but it won't cause any problems in context.

Five stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

This book absolutely destroyed me. I'm familiar with the author through numberphile, and I should've known better than to read this because numberphile makes me want to switch my concentration to math, and this book just added physics to that. Neither are a good idea. I don't think I'll ever stop coming back to math every few years and remembering the way I felt when my middle school math teacher taught me about infinity, but this trip to exploding head land was probably the best yet.

"Fun" is not often a word associated with theoretical physics and mathematics, but like a puppy showing off its toys to visitors, Padilla genuine enthusiasm for these subjects makes it impossible not to be drawn into the excitement. He seems to determined to wipe away the stereotypes of fuddy-duddy, boring mathematicians and physicists by highlighting the interesting, and occasionally tragic, lives of figures such as Emmy Noether and Georg Cantor, while explaining the important and mind-bending work they produced.

A long-time contributor to the popular YouTube channels Sixty Symbols and Numberphile, Padilla has obviously learned how to communicate science and mathematics successfully for a wide audience, without necessarily losing rigor. Filled with anecdote and illustrative thought experiments, this book actually made me understand the holographic principle (at least for a minute or two), which had eluded me for years.

A fun tour of modern physics via the numbers that define it, <i>Fantastic Numbers and Where to Find Them</i> is a welcome jolt to the genre.