Individualised mathematics Book

In the foreword to the book, Reuben Hersh quotes Peter Lax (with an apology for inaccuracy) as saying "A lecture by Rota is like a double martini!" That sounds about right -- and if true, the olive is certainly in Chapter 20, "A Mathematician's Gossip." I think Rota is almost completely sincere in this little gem, for example: "Milan has succeeded in overtaking Paris in women's fashions, but Paris retains the title for intellectual ellegance. The finest presentations of today's mathematics are heard in the halls of the Institut Henri Poincare, where polite insultes are elegantly exchanged with jewels of mathematical definitiveness." Or what of this little aside, which feels so much pointed to me after a semester of teaching probability theory: "Writers of probability texts are laboring under the illusion nurtured by the late Willy Feller that discrete probability is easier than continuous probability."

And what of the book reviews? I quote one review in its entirety (a review of Passmore's Recent Philosophers): "When pygmies cast such long shadows, it must be very late in the day."

Priceless, I tell you. Priceless.