First non-fiction book that I read cover to cover was a little book in college library called "the history of numbers" (If I remember it correctly). Somehow I really love when a chapter starts with historical overview of the subject. The seemingly "obvious" ideas have taken so many centuries to become "obvious" to everyone. I find it both scary -- how slow the truth propagates -- and humbling as well.
In my opinion, Stillwell’s book is better to read as a way to motivate a particular topic, whereas Struik’s book really tries to illustrate the arc of mathematics through history—of course, Struik’s approach has its limits.
History can motivate otherwise inscrutable or dry mathematics in a way that would probably interest many students. Why isn’t the history of math a serious part of secondary school? I don’t think US students remember that much of whatever we do teach there anyway.
[1]: https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_Concise_History_of_Ma... or https://archive.org/details/concisehistoryof0000dirk
Because 4 years already isn't enough time.
Teaching the history of math would tell the students what they don't know and would no doubt motivate many to learn more.
I had a short course on History of Philosophy in high-school which I liked but which was kind of fuzzy because that's the way philosophy is. It was hard to discern any progress or direction in the study of philosophy over the centuries.
Whereas with math, there is no fuzziness about it, except in Fuzzy Logic of course.
Very true, similar to what happened to geometric algebra.