Abstract
I begin with kerosene at seven cents a gallon. In Northeastern Massachusetts this was its price in the winter of 1936. The winter was fierce and the economic depression was worse. My father could not afford to heat more than one room of our house — the kitchen, naturally. And so we lived in the kitchen, as did many of our neighbors. There was my father, my mother, and I; my older brothers and sister were away. When it was time for bed, I opened the door of an icy bedroom, closed it behind me carefully, and lay down between two quilts on top and an old khaki army blanket underneath.
Quod vitce sectabor iter?
What path shall I take through life?
— Ausonius (310–393) Dreamed by René Descartes November 10, 1619
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Davis, P.J. (1997). Napoleon’s Theorem. In: Mathematical Encounters of the Second Kind. Birkhäuser Boston. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-2462-4_1
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