I actually read The Arithmetic of Life before Hardboiled Wonderland but forgot to put it up. Found this book on the recommendation of the O'Reilly radar. Within a day, the book went from being around 300,000th on Amazon's rank to 3,000th. None of the bookstores around Palo Alto carried it, so I used this occasion to enroll into the Palo Alto library system and got the book within minutes and read it in hours. I found the articles interesting and thought-provoking - albeit a bit repetitive. The writer *really* hates the Congress and makes sure we know it often. Overall, this book is a great read for those who say math isn't useful in their daily lives. The articles are short, easy to read, easy to relate to and even entertaining.