Robert A. Black, Mathematical Storyteller

The America of today is a lost cause. Don't believe me? Then just watch the Trumpy Bear commercial. Fortunately, what I saw this afternoon gave me hope for the future. A day of making author visits to various classes at Park Tudor School concluded with a middle school genealogy group, about twenty kids who have been digging into their family histories. I was there to talk about the way I used my own family history in both Liberty Girl and The Eyes of the Enemy . They were impressed with what I had to tell them, and they liked the family artifacts I had to show them. But I was pretty impressed with them as well. I don't know whether Park Tudor has been making a push for greater diversity or greater diversity is something that's just been happening naturally - maybe some of both. Whatever the reason, the group in front of me was a markedly richer mix than we had forty years ago. And yet, they were all running into similar obstacles in their research. A whit...

One year into the Trumpocalypse, and I have a number of different thoughts trying to crowd their way through my fingers and onto the screen. Let's see which ones make it out here. For the past year, I've thought, read, written, talked and listened, trying to make sense of what happened and what we can do about it. Some of the things I've thought about haven't been pleasant. It's "my people" who did this to us. "My" Midwestern, Christian white folks. People I've known my whole life were a part of it. That's been very hard to understand - and the things I have understood are hard to accept. At the end of the day, it all keeps coming back to race. Bigotry in general, really. Women and LGBT people are in the crosshairs too. But more than anything else, it keeps coming back to race. It's easy to see when Trump does something like defend the white supremacy marchers in Charlottesville. But it keeps showing up elsewhere, t...

Whew! I really needed this weekend. Three days of Leadership Skills training followed by the first day of an audit to renew our Chinese export license will do that to you. I still have Audit Days 2 and 3 coming up tomorrow and Tuesday, but it's been nice to have a break before those came along. A few weeks ago, I started writing the first of my Mathematical Biographies, the project my publisher pitched to me at last year's California Homeschool Conference. While I was wrapping up The Eyes of the Enemy over the past year, I was also researching mathematicians, trying to find the right mix of people and mathematical ideas. An overarching theme began to emerge as I explored the possibilities, one that came from watching the world around me as much as it did from my research. I knew I wanted a diverse set of subjects, and my publisher did too. Various news events have convinced me it was the right decision. My current plan covers thirteen subjects over nine books. Of ...