1. FERMAT'S LAST THEOREM
From Library Journal
It is extremely unusual for an advance in pure mathematics to draw the attention of the press worldwide. However, there was a great furor in 1993 when Andrew Wiles announced he had derived a proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, which had defeated mathematicians for more than 300 years. This brief book, written by a statistician rather than a number theorist, presents for the general public the long historical background, the awkward temporary retraction by Wiles, and his final triumph in 1995. The human drama is well presented, but the discussion of the mathematics itself is less successful. The author makes a good start in dealing with the fundamentals but leaps too quickly for lay readers into more complex ideas laden with jargon that is only partially explained. The book might have worked better if the author had taken several dozen additional pages to work through the mathematical concepts in more detail. For larger math collections.?Jack W. Weigel, Univ. of Michigan Lib., Ann Arbor
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

2. THE LANGUAGE INSTINCT
From Publishers Weekly
A three-year-old toddler is "a grammatical genius"--master of most constructions, obeying adult rules of language. To Pinker, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology psycholinguist, the explanation for this miracle is that language is an instinct, an evolutionary adaptation that is partly "hard-wired" into the brain and partly learned. In this exciting synthesis--an entertaining, totally accessible study that will regale language lovers and challenge professionals in many disciplines--Pinker builds a bridge between "innatists" like MIT linguist Noam Chomsky, who hold that infants are biologically programmed for language, and "social interactionists" who contend that they acquire it largely from the environment. If Pinker is right, the origins of language go much further back than 30,000 years ago (the date most commonly given in textbooks)--perhaps to Homo habilis , who lived 2.5 million years ago, or even eons earlier. Peppered with mind-stretching language exercises, the narrative first unravels how babies learn to talk and how people make sense of speech. Professor and co-director of MIT's Center for Cognitive Science, Pinker demolishes linguistic determinism, which holds that differences among languages cause marked differences in the thoughts of their speakers. He then follows neurolinguists in their quest for language centers in the brain and for genes that might help build brain circuits controlling grammar and speech. Pinker also argues that claims for chimpanzees' acquisition of language (via symbols or American Sign Language) are vastly exaggerated and rest on skimpy data. Finally, he takes delightful swipes at "language mavens" like William Safire and Richard Lederer, accusing them of rigidity and of grossly underestimating the average person's language skills. Pinker's book is a beautiful hymn to the infinite creative potential of language. Newbridge Book Clubs main selection; BOMC and QPB alternates.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.