Geometry remains one of the most intuitively appealing subfields of Mathematics. However, as anyone who has studied geometry at any length will attest, the visual beauty of geometry oftentimes belies its underlying intellectual complexity. Like in many other parts of Mathematics, sometimes it’s the things that are easy to visualize and state, which can be fiendishly hard to understand and prove.

In “Beautiful Geometry” Eli Maor and Eugen Jost aim to give the reader a sampler of some of the most interesting problems and ideas from the almost three thousand years long history of Geometry. The book is designed to inform and educate the reader, and even though it’s not written as a traditional math textbook, it does require an active engagement on the part of the reader. There are many proofs and other fairly rigorous demonstrations, which, although not terribly long nor complex, do require that the reader is comfortable and used to going through rigorous mathematical reasoning. Many of the proofs can be found in most elementary geometry textbook, but if you are like me you probably haven’t seen them in many, many years and I appreciate a gentle reintroduction to this material. Maor is a great pedagogue, and this is probably as good of an elementary exposition of geometry as they come.

This is a beautifully designed hardbound book that would be right at home in almost any library. However, it doesn’t quite rise to the level of a math “coffee table” book. For one, even the most die-hard math enthusiast will not just casually pick up this book for the most absent-minded perusal. Furthermore the illustrations, although nice enough, have higher pedagogical than artistic value. Most of them are pretty flat and uninspiring, and don’t really make me want to open the book to just look at them. I think a book with a clearer separation between the artistic and educational illustrations, with former chosen based primarily on their artistic merit, would have been more interesting and well suited for this particular format. Nonetheless, I mostly enjoyed going through this book and would recommend it to any genuine math and geometry enthusiast.