The cry goes round the chancelleries: “Where is Derb?” Busy trying to

finish a long book review, that’s where. (The book is Louis Crompton’s

Homosexuality and Civilization, the review is for the forthcoming issue of

the excellent Claremont Review of Books.) Although, as well as being

busy, I confess to being a little dazed by the number — it is five or six,

but that strikes me as five or six too many — of readers who e-mailed me to

say that 60 million immigrants from China, plus some corresponding number

from South Asia, Africa, etc., whould be just fine with them. Really.

Maybe all you guys could form a political party? You could call it “the

Democratic Party.” Or “the Republican Party.” Or something.

Speaking of book reviews, the Winter 2004 issue of that truly bodacious

periodical The Mathematical Intelligencer has a review by Prof. Harold

Edwards of Prime Obsession

. A glowing

review. The glow is, Prof. Edwards is at pains to make clear, unrelated to

the fact that PO extravagantly praises his own book

on the Riemann

Hypothesis. (He is much too nice to say what must surely be obvious to him:

that the later mathematical chapters of my book are a simplified version of

the earlier chapters of his.) As chance would have it, I am currently deep

in another one of Prof. Edwards’s books: the brilliant Galois Theory , which I happily recommend to anyone interested

in this subtle and curious branch of algebra.