The Tower of Hanoi – Myths and Maths Hardcover – 31 Jan. 2013

strangely it fills an unexpected hole in the literature

This book is written by four of the leading experts on the Tower of Hanoi. For this reason, it is destined to be an indispensable resource for researchers interested in the Tower of Hanoi. One goal of the authors is to standardize notation and terminology in future manuscripts.A bit about this book - It is not leisurely reading. This is a hardcore mathematical text. I would estimate that it is suitable for most first year graduate students and some advanced undergraduates. It is best read with a teacher and would make an excellent text for a special topics class or as a resource for a student doing a thesis/dissertation on the Tower of Hanoi. For this reason, I recommend it.Some minor issues -1) The book seems overly reliant on abbreviations. TH for Tower of Haoi is pretty self-explanatory and is used repeatedly. However, there are several abbreviations that the authors use a handful of times (even only once), with little fanfare. Given the existence of "search and replace," this seems like an unnecessary barrier to comprehension.2) The book uses strange notation and often repeats its notation for different concepts. An example of their strange notation, at one point a formula features a box, stating that formula is true provided that the box is =,>,or <. Later they consider the case where "box =>" (i.e., the box is replaced with >).In my opinion, the book is reasonably self-contained when it comes to the Tower of Hanoi. However, there are many techniques and concepts that go into this that the book either leaves out or skims over. For example, the reader should be confortable solving recurrence relations, elementary group theory, combinatorics (including Burnside's Lemma), graph theory, and algorithms. Fortunately, most of these concepts are developed as part of a good undergraduate education. At worst, these concepts can be filled in by a competent instructor or a dedicated student.As I said, my concerns are minor and in no way should they deter an researcher or dedicated student from reading this book. However, like with all good math books, read it with a pencil in hand. Be prepared to spend a bit of time working through examples/exercises and making notes in the margins.

The Tower of Hanoi book has all you ever wanted to know about the history and mathematics of the puzzle. However, the book goes deep into the Math, so it is not an easy read. The reader needs to know the Math, but more importantly, the reader needs to know the Math Symbols. The book relies heavily on Math notation.