One of the outstanding voices of his generation, David Foster Wallace has won a large and devoted following for the intellectual ambition and bravura style of his fiction and essays. Now he brings his considerable talents to the history of one of math's most enduring puzzles: the seemingly paradoxical nature of infinity.

Is infinity a valid mathematical property or a meaningless abstraction? The nineteenth-century mathematical genius Georg Cantor's answer to this question not only surprised him but also shook the very foundations upon which math had been built. Cantor's counterintuitive discovery of a progression of larger and larger infinities created controversy in his time and may have hastened his mental breakdown, but it also helped lead to the development of set theory, analytic philosophy, and even computer technology.

Smart, challenging, and thoroughly rewarding, Wallace's tour de force brings immediate and high-profile recognition to the bizarre and fascinating world of higher mathematics.

About the Author
David Foster Wallace (1962-2008) is the author of Infinite Jest, Girl with Curious Hair, Everything and More, The Broom of the System, and other fiction and nonfiction. Among his honors, he received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Award, and a Whiting Writers' Award.

Reviews
"A gripping guide to the modern taming of the infinite." -- New York Times Book Review
"[Wallace] brings to his task a refreshingly conversational style as well as a surprisingly authoritative command of mathematics....A success." -- John Allen Paulos - The American Scholar
"Shockingly readable....A brilliant antidote both to boring math textbooks and to pop-culture math books that emphasize the discoverer over the discovery." -- Booklist



Book Information
ISBN 9780393003383
Author David Foster Wallace
Format Hardback
Page Count 332
Imprint WW Norton & Co
Publisher WW Norton & Co
Weight(grams) 559g
Dimensions(mm) 211mm * 145mm * 28mm