✳flâneur — a map of the web's best reading

Great articles and books

math.stanford.edu · 858 words · saved by 1 readers

If you have suggestions of great writing, please let me know, and I'll add them here periodically. (I've lost much of the original list coming out of that lunch unfortunately.) I won't attach names to the suggestions, although I'll keep track of the number of times each article or book was proposed. I refuse to give criteria for greatness; that's your job. But please don't propose writing that has a major flaw unless it is outweighed by some other truly outstanding qualities. In particular, "great writing" is not the same as "proof of a great theorem". I won't veto any suggestions (except you are not allowed to recommend anything by yourself or me, because we are both such great writers, and it just wouldn't be fair), so if you see something terrible listed here, don't blame me; blame the anonymous contributor. No more than three per person please! Feel free to pick things already on this list (so they will appear with multiplicity). Not acceptable reasons: Acceptable reasons: This lis

Great articles and books Great articles and books Added August 2025: This page is not meant to be canonical, and is really only sporadically updated. But I wanted to mention something I just stumbled upon: see this blog post by Burt Totaro for great examples. In spring 2008, during one of our algebraic geometry lunches, we discussed how to write mathematics well. I find that learning by example is more helpful than being told what to do. In this spirit, we tried to name as many examples of "great writing" as possible. Asking for "the best article you've read" isn't reasonable or helpful. Inste

Explore this link on the map →

related reading