Flatland

A square living in a two-dimensional world is shown the third dimension and cannot make his countrymen believe it. Abbott was a headmaster and theologian, and the geometry is a cover for a very sharp look at Victorian class and the treatment of women; the book has been in print for a hundred and forty years, mostly among mathematicians. Fifty-six plates of moonlit squares, harbors, and comets by painters such as Henry Pether and Henry Edward Locke run through the text, giving the flat geometry a night sky to unfold against.