I suspect maths in primary school would be greeted with far more enthusiasm if students had Ian Stewart as a teacher. Any man who can explain electromagnetism, gravity and atomic nuclear forces in terms of a piggy fridge magnet and a smashed kitchen plate is, surely, a communicator to be reckoned with.

Sylvia Nasar told the story of John Nash's troubled life in her book A Beautiful Mind, although probably better known as the film with Russel Crow.

Longitude was first published in 1996, occupying a substantial portion of many a Waterstones table around Christmas-time. The book has endorsements from Patrick O'Brien and Neil Armstrong, and a blurb that cheerfully describes the search for longitude as a "true-life thriller".

Have you got a favourite number? I have two — 3 and 8 — but I'm afraid my reasons aren't particularly interesting: I am born on the 3rd and 8 is two 3's joined together.

How to cut a cake is the latest volume holding reprinted articles from Stewart's regular maths column in Scientific American between 1987 and 2001.

'This book starts with the story of Larry Walters, who decided to try flying a garden chair with some fifty helium weather balloons attached. Larry didn't do the maths, and ended up at 16,000 feet! Michael de Smith has written a book for all the Larrys who need or ought to do some mathematical analysis of a problem before setting out.

With this collection of letters Ian Stewart, accomplished mathematician, science writer, and even science fiction writer, accompanies a young and imaginary student on her path to becoming a professional mathematician. The letters address the questions that arise naturally at the crucial points in "Meg's" career, from leaving school and pondering whether to take a maths degree, through to becoming a fully established mathematician wondering how to juggle teaching and research.

At the earliest age, children around the world ask questions about the nature of existence and how we came to be here. Simon Singh's third and most ambitious work of popular science takes us on a journey through the ages, as man's sense of his own importance in the universe shrank ever smaller and his idea of time stretched from a few thousand to around fifteen billion years.

What makes numbers interesting? The subtitle of this beautiful book is the motivation, map, and message of its 188-page journey from zero to infinity. With concise insight, Reid takes the digits from 0 to 9 as chapter titles and starting points of voyages into the history and deep concepts of modern mathematics.

Do you love football, marvel at Beckham's perfect swerving free kicks and find formations fascinating? Or do you love science, and want to find out how aerodynamics affects a ball in flight and discover the insights statistical analysis of real-life data can give?

The hero of this book is Euler's formula: eiπ + 1 = 0 This simple equation has been widely considered through the last two centuries to be one of the most beautiful formulae of mathematics, and Nahin tells us why.

One of the things I enjoy most about biographies of mathematicians is the presentation of mathematics as a very human endeavour. Despite the sometimes abstract nature of mathematics, we see in this biography of Kurt Gödel that it is a very human activity pursued by people within a deeply connected community, but each with their own vision of truth.