Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

This lavishly illustrated book provides an unusually accessible approach to geometry by placing it in historical context. With concise discussions and carefully chosen illustrations the author brings the material to life by showing what problems motivated early geometers throughout the world. Geometry Civilized covers classical plane geometry, emphasizing the methods of Euclid but also drawing on advances made in China and India. It includes a wide range of problems, solutions, and illustrations, as well as a chapter on trigonometry, and prepares its readers for the study of solid geometry and conic sections.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Preface
• 1 An old story
• 1.1 Euclid and his modern rivals
• 1.2 Geometry in and as culture
• 1.3 No royal road
• 2 From points to proof
• 2.1 Necessary ingredients
• 2.2 The size of the earth
• 2.3 The point of proof
• 2.4 Exercises
• 3 Tricks with triangles
• 3.1 The bridge of asses
• 3.2 Practice
• 3.3 Similarity
• 3.4 Deception
• 3.5 Exercises
• 4 Many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse
• 4.1 The theorem of Pythagoras
• 4.2 The Chinese Pythagoras
• 4.3 More trigonometry
• 4.4 Exercises
• 5 From polygons to pi
• 5.1 Some interesting circles
• 5.2 Touching, again
• 5.3 Regular polygons
• 5.4 Not so easy as pie
• 5.5 Exercises
• 6 Tough knots
• 6.1 Hero's formula for the area of a triangle
• 6.2 Huygen's improved method of computing pi
• 6.3 Radian measure
• 6.4 The burning mirror
• 6.5 Gothic lights
• 6.6 The Tantalus problem
• Bibliography
• Index