The crest of the peacock Book

I've had this book for years. I flipped through it once in awhile and kept it around because I was interested in the multiple histories of math origins. To counter another review here, the author does not propose a thesis of the European inheritance of math from elsewhere nor does he glorify Indian mathematicians. He suggests there may be some paths of that nature but they are clearly loose hypotheses. Mostly he focuses on math and eventually we get to the real inheritance of our dominant decimal system.

What worked the best for me were the alternating passages on history embedded with the somewhat clear breakdown, usually side by side with contemporary algebra, of some ancient method of performing a calculation. These were very interesting for me to work out. I expect to revisit some of the math in the book here and there to work through more of the problems he invites the reader to try.

This is a very even-handed book. Where the author does not have enough time to go deeper into a subject, he offers up other avenues in the text. I will be taking him up on that offer.