Though a bit poetic and grandiose near the end, some parts are fairly useful; the chapter entitled "[b:Slouching towards Bethlehem|424|Slouching Towards Bethlehem Essays|Joan Didion|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/71883A3CWNL._SL75_.gif|1844]" for instance. The chapter "Bathhouses and Spiders" gave me mathematical chills. If you can make it through millennia of boring historical exposition and on through the high-concept math (sort of a fuzzy real analysis) you'll get to the philosophical bits, and that's what I enjoyed the most. If you like even your conversational math to be strict this book might infuriate you. If you failed (or never took) calculus you won't understand much of the second half of this book.