Beyond Infinity: An expedition to the outer limits of the mathematical universe

The brilliant and charismatic Eugenia Cheng takes us on a dizzying journey through what's bigger than infinity and smaller than its opposite

Every child had a schoolyard fight that ended with this classic exchange: “Nuh-uh, times infinity!” “Yeah-huh, times infinity plus one!” The argument goes to the heart of a question everyone has wondered about: What is infinity?

Musician, chef, and mathematician Eugenia Cheng has some answers. Whether pondering why some numbers are uncountable, or why infinity plus one is not the same as one plus infinity, Cheng takes readers on a staggering journey from math at its most elemental to its loftiest abstractions. Along the way she considers how you could use a chessboard to help plan a dinner party for the world, what it would mean to make a chicken-sandwich sandwich, and if you could create infinite cookies from a finite ball of dough (the math says yes!).

For readers of Here's Looking at Euclid and The Joy of X, Beyond Infinity shows how this little symbol—∞—can make us kings and queens of infinite space.