Word: lancelot
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Manhattan Publisher William Warder Norton rarely wears a hat, rarely publishes fiction. He wants books which will win scholarly praise. In Lancelot Hogben's Mathematics for the Million he had a best-seller (200,000 copies) which won the praise of such mathematicians as Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell. Last fortnight he published a Hogben-edited book which is equally scholarly and fit for laymen. It seeks to explain the evolution, anatomy, functioning, diseases and future of language...
...Street) is a fellow with an ordinary-sized head living in an outsize universe. The Education of T. C. Mits (Hugh Gray Lieber and Lillian R. Lieber; W. W. Norton; $2.50) is a book which tries to tell him something about modern mathematics. While nowhere near as solid as Lancelot Hogben's famed Mathematics for the Million, it is one of the liveliest and most ornamental of the mathematics popularizers. The chief moral pointed by the authors is .that things are not always what they seem, so watch your thinking...
...world." It serves some 40,000 meals a day from Salton Sea (246 ft. below sea level) to Climax, Colo. (11,320 ft. above) and in many cases houses them too (total cost: $1.75 a day; $1.50 for meals, 25? for rooms). Founded by railroad-camp Flunky William Lancelot ("Billy") Anderson 30 years ago (when he was the first Westerner to provide fresh sheets and milk to camp workers), it is now run by his chubby widow, grosses around $4,000,000 on meals alone...
Mathematicians have long been haunted by a paradox: although most U.S. citizens profess to dread the study of mathematics, they are suckers for mathematical puzzles, made a best-seller of Lancelot Hogben's Mathematics for the Million. The mathematicians' conclusion: the trouble is not with mathematics but with the way it is taught. Most math teachers emphasize computation to the point of drudgery. A prime example (from an old U.S. arithmetic textbook - Greenleaf 's) : "Required the contents of the earth, supposing its circumference to be 25,000 miles. Ans. 263,858,149,120.06886875 cubic miles...
Through a delightful realm of fantasy, burlesque, satire, medieval curiosa and gentle moralizing wander countless strange folk, such as the Cockney knight, Sir Meliagrance ("Yes, Ma'am, in 'arf a minute"). Typical episode: Lancelot stuck his sword in the ground, and went over to examine the wound. . . . "You've cut open my liver" said the man accusingly...