Human eccentricity and ingenuity

Steven Poole and John Dugdale on Dr Riemann's Zeros | Siouxsie and the Banshees | Mapping Human History | Bach | Interesting Times | Benjamin Franklin

Dr Riemann's Zeros, by Karl Sabbagh (Atlantic, £8.99)
Readers will no doubt be familiar with the Riemann hypothesis, which says that if you do something very clever (I am paraphrasing slightly), you will arrive at an exact figure for the number of prime numbers in any given range of numbers, without actually having to figure them all out manually. Bernhard Riemann thought his trick was "very probably" correct in 1859, but no one has been able to prove it yet - not for want of trying, as Sabbagh's book shows. What he has done, as a non-mathematician author, is to hunt down mathematicians around the world and get them not only to explain the crunchy details of zeta functions and so forth, but also to explain how they came to love doing maths in the first place. The book thus becomes part detective story and part social portrait of a fascinating world of human eccentricity and ingenuity. Sabbagh's grammar may occasionally stumble, but he is a charming guide. SP

Siouxsie and the Banshees: The Authorised Biography, by Mark Paytress (Sanctuary, £9.99)
This story of the turbulent times of the seminal goth-punkers comes straight from the horses' mouths: Paytress has interviewed all the band members to provide a smoke'n'drugs-filled Rashomon-style reminiscence of a band's life, which is probably the best way to do it. Early stories include a bass player who didn't know which was his E string (they shouted "The thick string! Just hit the thick string!"); thence it is a tale of occasional success and increasing oddness, with the usual (but still disgusting) record-company treacheries, the inevitable split, and a triumphant comeback tour of Japan. Occasional interjections come from other luminaries such as Robert Smith, Marc Almond, John Cale and even fringemeister Phil Oakey, while Shirley Manson contributes a devotional foreword about how "She shaped my life. I wouldn't be singing if it weren't for Siouxsie" - perhaps not the legacy Sioux dreamed of, but nice none the less. SP

Mapping Human History, by Steve Olson (Bloomsbury, £7.99)
Human beings can be quite physically dissimilar, but the latest findings show that we are all more closely related than was previously thought. Such is the repeated conclusion of Olson's highly readable tour d'horizon of the science of our species, starting with the migration of early humans from Africa, through the mysterious demise of the Neanderthals, the gradual dissemination of modern man throughout the globe, and up to modern issues of ethnicity and genetic testing. Olson also spends a lot of time carefully refuting rightwing pseudo-evolutionary thinking, and contributes impressively concise discussions of such matters as IQ scores among black Americans. Surprising dinner-party facts spice up the demonstration of our fundamental interconnectedness: everyone alive today, for example, is probably directly descended from Nefertiti, Confucius and Julius Caesar, though that may seem hard to credit in the case of George W Bush. SP

Bach, by Martin Geck (Haus Publishing, £8.99)
No need to ask which Bach - we are, of course, talking about the guv'nor, old JS himself, one of those apparently transhistorical, godlike figures (Shakespeare being another) whom it seems hard to believe was ever a real human being at all. Geck's little book argues that Bach was a uniquely transitional figure, looking back to the orderliness of the middle ages and forward to the individualist romanticism of Beethoven. It is easy to construct such plausible teleologies in hindsight, but Geck offers more than this Bach-as-Faust or even Bach-as-Isaac-Newton story. From the composer's childhood studies to his youth as a hotheaded Konzertmeister and his gradual evolution in Leipzig into unprecedented genius, the author makes judicious use of letters, contemporary reports and limpid accounts of harmony and counterpoint to put the man (sociable, funny, arrogant, worried about money) back into the music. The production values of the book are exquisite, too. SP

Interesting Times: A 20th-Century Life, by Eric Hobsbawm (Abacus, £9.99)
An academic career normally offers unpromising memoir material. What makes this such an engrossing autobiography is partly the historian's unusually cosmopolitan experience, stretching from a childhood in 1920s Vienna and 30s Berlin to regular postwar visits to the US, France, Italy and Latin America; and partly his Marxism, which forces him to reflect on the events of his lifetime, from the rise of Hitler to the September 11 attacks, via the end of the European empires and the USSR's collapse. Hobsbawm's 53 years in the Communist party is also a mystery (why didn't he quit?), which is never completely resolved; neither of the causes for staying he cites - youthful revolutionary dreams, proud reluctance to admit error - seems adequate to explain what those who did leave saw as complicity in Soviet crimes, or the belatedness of his recognition that "failure was built in from the start". JD

Benjamin Franklin, by Edmund S Morgan (Yale Nota Bene, £10.50)
Although he came nowhere in BBC2's Great Britons poll, Franklin regarded himself as an Englishman until the war of independence began in his 70th year, and his most celebrated achievements - conducting pioneering electrical experiments, and securing crucial French naval and financial support for the American revolutionaries - alone merit a place in the top echelon alongside Brunel and Nelson. Writing with exemplary lucidity, Morgan emphasises Franklin's omnivorous curiosity and devotion to public usefulness, showing how they connect his activities as printer, journalist, postmaster, soldier, scientist, inventor, entrepreneur, politician, diplomat and author. Particularly striking is the argument that Franklin was a belated and reluctant rebel: as agent for the colonies, lobbying against British taxes in London, he secretly saw himself as trying to remove a threat to the emergence of an all-powerful Anglo-American empire. JD