THE AMBIDEXTROUS UNIVERSE
by Martin Gardner
Scribners; 293 pages; $9.95
Mathematics can be a delight in the right hands. Or in the left ones. In this newly revised classic, Science Writer and Mathemagician Martin Gardner shows how and why. The Ambidextrous Universe begins by looking at mirrors and discussing the strange world that can be entered, in the manner of Alice, merely by looking in. That world is reflected in unsuspected places: snail shells can go either way; planets move against the clock or with it; even crystals and molecules can be sinister or...