The original collection, “A Handbook of Integer Sequences,” appeared in 1973 and contained 2,372 entries. In 1995, it became an “encyclopedia,” with 5,487 sequences and an additional author, Simon Plouffe, a mathematician in Quebec. A year later, the collection had doubled in size again, so Dr. Sloane put it on the internet.
“In a sense, every sequence is a puzzle,” Dr. Sloane said in a recent interview. He added that the puzzle aspect is incidental to the database’s main purpose: to organize all mathematical knowledge.
Taylor has written a bleak book with flashes of beauty, circling a hothouse of young people on the brink of transplantation into the harsh outside world. His ear for dialogue is exquisitely sensitive. Even if he calls it a novel, I hope he’s working on a play.
Powerful and affecting, “The Trackers” also suggests a sharp comparison between the disparities of its time and the dissonance of our own, and it raises the question of whether the past augurs recovery — or a siren in the night.
If you live in California — or anywhere in the West, for that matter — fires are a constant threat, and they’re getting worse by the year. In 2021 alone, two of them, the Caldor and Dixie fires, burned more than 1.18 million acres. Tens of thousands of people were displaced from their homes. But what would it feel like to run toward these infernos instead of away from them?
In her extraordinary debut memoir, “Burnt,” Clare Frank answers this question in a fascinating, boots-on-the-ground account of her storied career as a firefighter. From her first push-up at Sandy Point Training Center southeast of Pescadero in 1982 all the way up to her job as California’s state chief of fire protection in 2013 — the first and only woman to serve in that position — she takes readers behind the scenes in a play-by-play that is as riveting as it is informative.