Review of "Two Trains Leave Paris" by Taylor Marie Frey and Mike Wesolowski

My grandparents bought me the book “Two Trains Leave Paris: Number Problems for Word People” by Taylor Marie Frey and Mike Wesolowski for fun because we both enjoy riddles and puzzles. The book contains easy ways to think about mathematical problems conceptually by covering word problems using geometry, statistics, algebra, and even calculus. But the book also gives a history of these concepts, a detailed answer to each problem, explanations on why they are valuable, and many, many jokes. Since this book is not analysis heavy, here are examples of problems that it contains:

Problem Explaining Sine, Cosine, & Tangent

Explanation of the history of algebra

Explanation of a word problem

One of the book’s many joke pages

I truly loved this book because it gives you all the context any informational book would give you but also keeps the book primarily interactive. This book not only taught me way more than I thought it would, but it helped me understand why and how mathematical concepts that sometimes seem irrelevant can be used in the real world.