Renna Shesso's friendly tone, delightful "math lore," meticulous research, and clear information makes math easy to understand. This marvelous book begins with the simplest lunary and planetary math and then tackles the most enigmatic of numerical esoterica such as Platonic Solids, the Golden Section, Luna's Labyrinth, and Benjamin Franklin's favorite way to pass the time, "Magical Squares," akin to the 17th century Sudoku. For anyone who tried to understand the Fibonacci Sequence of numbers from Dan Brown's (son of a mathematician) The DaVinci Code, this book is for you! Much of what we know as math comes to us directly from early astronomer magi who needed to be able to describe and record what they saw in the night sky. Everyone needed math: whether you were the king's court astrologer or a farmer marking the best time for planting, timekeeping and numbers really mattered. Mistake a numerical pattern of petals and you could poison yourself. Lose the rhythm of a sacred dance or the meter of a ritually told story and the intricately woven threads that hold life together were spoiled. Ignore the celestial clock of equinoxes and solstices, and you'd risk being caught short of food for the winter.
