Much Ado About Numbers

Eastaway's hook is narrow and well-chosen: not "math in general" but the specific numerical culture Shakespeare and his audiences actually lived in, how Elizabethans counted, measured, gambled, and thought about number symbolism, and how that shows up in the wordplay and structure of the plays themselves. Reviewers have responded to the book precisely because it doesn't force the connection; it uses Shakespeare as an entry point into genuine mathematical and social history rather than dressing up trivia in a famous name. The one recurring knock is a handful of minor factual over-simplifications, but reviewers raising that point still recommend the book without reservation.