The Book of Wonders: The Many Lives of Euclid’s Elements

I was attracted to The Book of Wonders, having just enjoyed Violet Moller's The Map of Knowledge; Euclid's Elements is one of the ancient texts, of which she studies the survival.The strong point of Wardhaugh's book is that he brings the story right up to date, so that the book is not simply the story of an ancient text, but also the study of how geometry has been valued over the centuries, and how the structure of Euclid's text has been viewed as an approach to learning in general.The strength of Moller's book lies in the richness of the pictures she creates of her chosen locations at certain times. Wardhaugh by contrast keeps a narrow focus, and some of his episodes, set in the more distant past, are brief on account of the lack of source material. It could have been informative if he had adopted a wider focus at these points. For example, the piece on Theon of Alexandria mentions his daughter Hypatia and her murder. It is interesting that he does not, like Caroline Nixey, attribute the murder simply to a fanatical church mob, but he stops well short of a discussion of how deleterious an effect the church had on ancient learning and culture in the fourth and fifth centuries. This is something I would like to read more views on, since, having decided that Charles Freeman is too negative in his treatment of the church in The Closing of the Western Mind, I find it much to be regretted that, in The Awakening, he says nothing about what sent the western mind to sleep.Obviously, one has to accept Wardhaugh's decision on how the book should be written, but it would have been excellent if relevant issues, such as the factors affecting survival of texts, or the causes of the decline of Arabic science, had been given more weight.