Math isn’t a subject most people consider humorous or arbitrary. But Matt Parker (Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension) manages to portray the science of mathematics as both of these things in his brilliant new book, Humble Pi: When Math Goes Wrong in the Real World.

A former math teacher turned comedian and YouTuber, Parker uses a unique combination of witty prose and factual examples to guide the reader through a series of real-life events in which math didn’t work out exactly as expected. While many of us are aware of the precision and importance of math, we might not think about how much it’s integrated into our daily lives—for instance, what our computers and phones are doing behind the scenes, or how calendars and clocks track seasons and time based on the Earth’s orbit and rotation.

When a glitch does occur, we’re often surprised or even annoyed. Parker cleverly explains the how and why of these malfunctions in layman’s terms, drilling down to why math is so significant to our everyday activities. As he stresses, “We are approximation machines. Math, however, can get straight to the correct answer.” It’s both humbling and impressive to realize that much of what we’ve learned and achieved as a species actually stretches beyond what we were hard-wired for. 

And while this collection of Parker’s “favorite mathematical mistakes of all time” is fascinating and often humorous, it’s sometimes scary, too—especially when we realize how much hinges on mathematical calculations and the huge consequences of those calculations going wrong, such as bridges that fail, financial budget blunders and computer code errors that result in incorrect medical radiation doses. 

Ultimately, Humble Pi is an entertaining and essential read for both math whizzes and those who consider themselves mathematically challenged.

Chloé Hilliard is a rising star in comedy, a semifinalist on season 8 of NBC’s “Last Comic Standing” who has appeared on “The Tonight Show,” Comedy Central and on stages across the country. She often draws material from her life, playing up her Amazonian size—she’s six-one—and her roots in 1980s and ’90s Brooklyn. So I expected F*ck Your Diet: And Other Things My Thighs Tell Me, her new collection of personal essays, to be like an extended set: riffs on her childhood growing up black in a Hasidic neighborhood or on her on-again-off-again veganism.

What I didn’t know was that Hilliard has a degree in journalism from NYU and spent a decade working as a culture writer for publications like The Source, VIBE and The Village Voice. Her skills as a reporter are on fantastic display in this book. One early chapter describes the humiliations of the President’s Challenge fitness test in elementary school, before launching into a searing indictment of President Reagan—“the latest in a long line of fragile white men in the Oval Office who used propaganda to get Americans to accomplish the physical feats they themselves could not”—who promoted the ordeal while slicing funding for school meals and other services that could have actually improved children’s health. When she writes about an abusive relationship, a serious chapter that spares no hilarious detail of the dude’s unfathomable trashiness, she places her story in the larger context of intimate partner violence and its prevalence in communities of color. Her account of almost dying from a misdiagnosed MRSA infection delves into the history and ongoing legacy of scientific racism in medicine.

In other words, this book is more than just memoir. This is a personal story that illustrates how the most intimate aspects of existence—the way our bodies look, the way we feel about and feed them, the quality of our lives—are shaped by history and public policy, by capitalism and by the environments we live in. “What changed my life,” Hilliard writes with fierce dignity, “was the realization that my issue with weight wasn’t entirely my fault.”

But don’t worry. This book is still funny. In fact, it’s frequently hysterical. Hilliard is a sharp observer: media culture, office culture, the culture of improv comedy and the stand-up circuit all come under her lacerating gaze. (If you’ve ever worked in places that reward sycophantic drudgery over talent, skill and effort, you will appreciate her unforgettable takedown of the short-lived Lifetime magazine.)

In the end, what distinguishes Hilliard’s essays is her preference for messy honesty over neat conclusions. “This isn’t a self-help book,” she writes. “I don’t have any answers.” Instead, this is a record of a life in progress, of a woman who is still dealing with some shit. “I hope I’ve given you reason to reexamine the things you thought made you undesirable and unworthy,” she concludes. She’s done more than that—she’s given us a chance to laugh them off the stage.

Could there be a less propitious setting than the Tropicana Poker Room in Atlantic City on a Saturday morning? As Colson Whitehead reveals in The Noble Hustle, a darkly humorous work of participatory reportage that finds him (a decided amateur) attempting to play poker with the pros, the answer is a resounding no. On a typical Saturday morning, folks trickle into the Trop for the weekend tournament—regular types the author sorts into three different but equally undesirable categories: the Methy Mikes, the Robotrons and the Big Mitches.

Whitehead’s previous book was the acclaimed zombie novel Zone One, an emotionally scouring horror story with a post-apocalyptic setting and all-too-plausible plot, the writing of which seems to have taken a toll on him. The Noble Hustle opens right after he has wrapped Zone One. Grantland magazine has offered him the assignment of reporting on the World Series of Poker (WSOP) in Las Vegas, but he’s reluctant to take on the project.

“Now that I was done with the book, I was starting to feel human again,” Whitehead says. “I wanted to rejoin society, do whatever it is that normal people do when they get together. Drink hormone-free, humanely slaughtered beer. Eat micro-chickens. Compare sadnesses. . . .” Yes, that’s sadnesses, plural, and the usage is all too apt, as Whitehead, we learn, is four days into a divorce. And living in a crappy apartment. And struggling with the “rules of solo parenthood.”

Despite—or maybe because of—Whitehead’s blue mood, Hustle is a hoot. Casting himself as hapless protagonist and letting his comedic sensibilities—however cynical—steer the narrative, Whitehead proves an ideal observer of poker culture. Once he agrees to cover the tournament, which will be broadcast on ESPN, he has six weeks to prepare, and so he begins practicing at the Trop, working with a poker coach and playing against writer buddies in games that are casual rather than cutthroat—all pretty much to no avail. “By disposition,” Whitehead writes, “I was keyed into the entropic part of gambling, which says that eventually you will lose it all.”

At the WSOP, he holds his own for a while, but by the end of the first day, he’s “a lump of quivering human meat.”

Whitehead writes with authority about poker and provides plenty of play-by-play action, but the tale he tells is much more than that of an odds-against-him novice. It’s also the story of a writer befuddled by fatherhood and middle age. Whitehead may not triumph at the tables, but his new book is a winner.

This article was originally published in the May 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Sister Mother Husband Dog is a breezy and irresistible collection of essays from Delia Ephron. According to a family joke, Delia “shared half a brain” with her late, famous sister Nora, and there are undeniable likenesses in their work. Like Nora’s essay collections, the topics addressed in Delia’s book are wonderfully wide ranging and amusing. One essay memorably begins, “I don’t care about the weather. I care only what the weather is going to do to my hair.”

If you are of an Ephron sensibility—you’ve watched When Harry Met Sally . . . and Julie & Julia, or you’ve picked up I Feel Bad About My Neck or Hanging Up—this book will give you more of what you love best. More great one-liners: “When the conversation turns to dogs, you know the party is five minutes from being over.” More delightfully random tangents, about famous New York danishes, for example. More outrageous stories about the family. However, unlike Nora’s essays, some of Delia’s flatly refuse a tidy resolution.

For instance, consider Delia’s comment when writing about her mother in “Why I Can’t Write About My Mother”: “What I’m writing—my intention to get a grip on her—keeps spinning out of control. . . . I keep trying to make this essay ‘neat,’ bend it to my will, make it track, but I can’t.” These more complex topics, which also include Nora’s death, balance the lighter pieces about dog shows and technological difficulties. Sometimes after finishing one of the more complicated essays, I found myself marveling at Ephron’s ability to circuitously connect a series of unlikely dots, thus forming a memorable and original constellation—something that only the very best essays do well.

The voice of Delia’s father echoes through the collection, though he is not mentioned in the title by name. She tells us of their family dinners. “That’s a great line!” he’d yell to his daughters. “Write it down!” And readers like me are so very happy that the Ephron women obeyed the command, took a sidelong look around and grabbed a pen.