From the New York Times-bestselling mathematician author of How Not to Be Wrong, a far-ranging exploration of the power of geometry, which turns out to help us think better about practically everything

How should a democracy choose its representatives? How can you stop a pandemic from sweeping the world? How do computers learn to play Go, and why is learning Go so much easier for them than learning to read a sentence? Can ancient Greek proportions predict the stock market? (Sorry, no.) What should your kids learn in school if they really want to learn to think? All these are questions about geometry. 

If you're like most people, geometry is a sterile and dimly remembered exercise you gladly left behind in the dust of ninth grade, along with braces and active romantic interest in pop singers. You may recall plodding through a series of miniscule steps only to prove some fact about triangles that was obvious in the first place. That's not geometry. Okay, it is geometry, but only a tiny part, which has as much to do with geometry in all its flush modern richness as conjugating a verb has to do with a great novel.

Geometry doesn't just measure the world—it explains it. Shape shows us how.