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Review title: A Meandering, Lazy River through the Mathematical Forest
Product review: This was a somewhat frustrating experience for someone interested in learning more of the life of Paul Erdos. At the end of it, you feel acquainted with his quirky turns of phrase (bosses, slaves, epsilons, Sam & Joe, the great SF) but why did he engage himself with certain types of mathematics (prime numbers) and not others, what did he struggle with as he grew up, what shaped him into the memorable yet odd-ball mathematician that he became. All of these topics are brushed over lightly as Hoffman takes another digression into the life of Ron Graham, or the life of Fermat and the nature of his Last Theorem. I can't help but feel that this book was cut and pasted together from multiple, barely related writings of Hoffman until the requisite number of pages was reached to satisfy the needs of the publisher. Disappointing.
