Everything and More

A Compact History of Infinity

By: David Foster Wallace

Narrated by: Robert Petkoff

"A gripping guide to the modern taming of the infinite." —New York Times

Part history, part philosophy, part love letter to the study of mathematics, Everything and More is an illuminating tour of infinity. With his infectious curiosity and trademark verbal pyrotechnics, David Foster Wallace takes us from Aristotle to Newton, Leibniz, Karl Weierstrass, and finally Georg Cantor and his set theory. Through it all, Wallace proves to be an ideal guide—funny, wry, and unfailingly enthusiastic. Featuring an introduction by Neal Stephenson, this edition is a perfect introduction to the beauty of mathematics and the undeniable strangeness of the infinite.

*Includes a downloadable PDF with images from the text

Critic reviews

Everything and More is, in nearly every way, a gift. It’s a thoughtful and witty 300-page testimonial to the qualities I never fully understood that mathematics possessed: Math is astonishing and full of ‘shadowlands,’ and—ultimately—stunning beauty. —Anthony Doerr, Boston Globe

[Wallace] brings to his task a refreshingly conversational style as well as a surprisingly authoritative command of mathematics…A success.—John Allen Paulos, American Scholar

Wallace is the perfect parachute buddy for a free fall into the mathematical and metaphysical abyss that is infinity.—Dennis Lim, Village Voice

All the grace of pure mathematics without the parts that make me want to bang my head against the wall.—Daniel Handler, Newsday

Shockingly readable…a brilliant antidote both to boring math textbooks and to pop-culture math books that emphasize the discoverer over the discovery.—Booklist (starred review)

Equations via audio are tuff

Performance was good, and there was a lot of interesting stuff to think about including funny factoids, but when it comes to equations i need to see them written out unless they’re REALLY simple. Often times, DFW did a good job of giving you the upshot of what a specific equation meant, but just as often i felt like i was missing something by not seeing the equation on a page.
Maybe something like this could be added to the pdf??? Go section by section, equation by equation with time-stamps or something…
What should DEFINITELY have been added to the pdf, though, is the emergency glossaries and, I would argue, a bunch of other terms that are frequently brought up, since even though many of those things are defined in the text, it isn’t easy to flip back to them in this audio format.
So, yeah. Don’t be so stingy with the pdf