Discrete thoughts Book

It's a shame that this book isn't a regular fixture of undergraduate math departments, because it's one of the few books that reads the same way mathematicians speak. Kac and Rota write with such easy whimsy, and erudite doublespeak, that it makes you dizzy.
How much longer will the present folie for precision in philosophy last? Need a concept be precise in order to be meaningful and effective? Or do philosophers wish to commit hari-kiri on the altar of mathematics?

Complete axiomatization, someone has rightly said, is an obituary of an idea, and Hilbert's great feat was, in a way only a magnificent necrology of geometry. Anyway, there are worse things than being wrong, and being dull and pedantic are surely among them.
The book is actually a pretty good litmus test: if you can survive reading their essays, which are remarkably readable, insightful, and even at times educational, you might just have a career in mathematics.

Not only is it a joy to read three authors with a deep and varied passion in mathematics, its past and present, but it's an interesting historical relic. They often speculate, particularly on the infant Computer Science, what the future holds. They predict, with startling accuracy, the glorious danger of blindly applying game theory to economics, and the potential for computers to revolutionize everything.

It does, however, start to feel a little scattershot by the end. Some essays are just book reviews -- frankly a little overly scathing at times (a biography of Hilbert is described "factually impeccable and intellectually a fiasco"). And while Schwartz's essays are included since he clearly has a far better grasp of computers, it is also clear that he isn't nearly as talented a writer. Which is a shame, because they're very interesting, but he lacks Kac and Rota's gleeful, devilish approach to verbal antics.

[I'm also less than wild about Rota's tic in particular of including entire passages in German or French untranslated. I suspect if I was reading the essay by itself, a little work on the reader's part is forgivable and even encouraging. But after a while, it sure feels like I'm intentionally being left out]

Nevertheless, I'd wish more books in mathematics took the same approach as this. A frank, mature attitude leavened with childlike love for a wholly human endeavor.