bFrom preeminent math personality and author of iThe Joy of x, i a brilliant and endlessly appealing explanation of calculus--how it works and why it makes our lives immeasurably better. b pWithout calculus, we wouldn't have cell phones, TV, GPS, or ultrasound. We wouldn't have unraveled DNA or discovered Neptune or figured out how to put 5,000 songs in your pocket.pThough many of us were scared away from this essential, engrossing subject in high school and college, Steven Strogatz's brilliantly creative, down-to-earth history shows that calculus is not about complexity it's about simplicity. It harnesses an unreal number--infinity--to tackle real-world problems, breaking them down into easier ones and then reassembling the answers into solutions that feel miraculous.ppiInfinite Powersi recounts how calculus tantalized and thrilled its inventors, starting with its first glimmers in ancient Greece and bringing us right up to the discovery of gravitational waves a phenomenon predicted b