What, you need math for that?

I was reading the book: Kepler's Conjecture: How Some of the Greatest Minds in History Helped Solve One of the Oldest Math Problems in the World by George Szpiro this weekend. A friend of mine looked at it, and asked me what it is about. I told him it's how the mathematics community sought to prove that the best way to stack oranges is how your grocer does it. He's retort:

You need math for that?

Seriously, I'm just about finished with the book and it's a *pretty* good read but not extraordinary. Szpiro does a good job of telling the problem, discussing the personalities of the people who've worked to solve the problem and a bit on their approaches. He doesn't weave in the mathematics with the story though and that's a shame. The math is the most interesting part. He does have appendices of the math but I haven't read them yet. As an example of a defficiency in the book, his explanations never (I mean never) refer to the figures he's placed in the text. So while he has figures to help, the reader is left to see where and how a particular figure is related to the explanations. I plan to write more later, but that's a quick review for now.