Two big reviews of Prime Obsession, though big in different ways.

First, a review in American Scientist. This one, for me personally, is worth ten of any

other.

It’s by Enrico Bombieri, a first-rank mathematician (he won a Fields

medal

in 1974–details here)

and

a very major name in Riemann Hypothesis studies. He is left out of my

book

only because his work is at too high a level for the elementary

presentation

I decided on. I apologize to him for this in the book’s Prologue. That

apology actually carries a double load of guilt because Prof. Bombieri’s

account of the Riemann Hypothesis on the Clay Mathematics Institute website was the starting point for my own

readings, whose eventual result was Prime Obsession. It is a

marvelous

short presentation of the RH and all its many ramifications. As well as

being a brilliant mathematician, Prof. Bombieri is a mathematical

character,

somewhat in the style of Edmund Landau (see Chapter 14 of P.O.) I

consider

it a great honor to have been reviewed by Prof. Bombieri. Even if it

had

been a bad review, I would have swallowed it without complaint. That it

is

decently good (not ecstatic, but decently good), has me glowing.

Then there is a review in Sunday’s

New York Times book section, by James Alexander, a math professor at

Case

Western Reserve University. I don’t know what to say about this one.

It

isn’t a bad review, but then it isn’t particularly good, either. I was

alerted to it by a phone call from a friend in Manhattan. (They get the

Sunday book section a day or two ahead of actual Sunday.) “What kind of

review is it?” I asked him. “Good? Bad? Or what?” He: “Neither one

thing nor the other.” Which pretty much sums it up. My publisher is

thrilled, anyway. To get a book of any kind reviewed in the NYT is a

coup, and the publisher’s attitude is: “Just so long as they spelled

your

name right…”