Sounds as if the Hands text is in the vein of the growing Big History movement, though I doubt that he uses the term to describe his work as such.

I'm about halfway through physicist Sean Carroll's new book The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, & the Universe Itself (Basic, May 2016 http://amzn.to/22teEyD), which is very good. So far it covers the build up of modern physics laced with more philosophy of science than most popular science books include and is an interesting read.

@JSEllenberg Congrats! That'll be a nice bump in sales. @BillGates is the @Oprah of technical books for smart people. The Shlomo Sternberg bit reminded me of several Hopkins mathematicians recently commiserating over the death of his fellow classmate Sol Golomb last week.

Shoniqua: This is a poor conspiracy theory at best.

Given the tight margins in publishing math texts, it's my experience that any but the top .01% actually make any real profit for the authors. Given my experience the vast majority of math textbook authors actually want to give away the answers and actually help students. in the past several years, I've directly emailed math professors who've written textbooks for help and advice and most of them have actually replied, not only promptly, but typically with more information that I requested about particular problems and often with full solutions, and in many cases they've sent met full sets of solutions for their entire texts and in a few other cases, they've sent me full electronic copies of their texts for free!

I'll also note, there's also been a growing trend for mathematicians to reserve the right to publish electronic copies of their books on their personal websites where they make them freely available to students.

For the Q.E.D. Thesaurus: N.B.N. (Nothing But Net!) http://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2016/01/27/math-books-i-wish-i-had-on-my-shelf/ #Math