and Gauss's contributions and style. For the reader, this can be a somewhat confusing approach to "biographical story-telling." Generally, a biography tends to weave such materials together into a more coordinated whole. For example, one might expect that while describing the childhood and youth of the subject a biographer would simultaneously address any environmental issues likely to have had an influence on that subject. Instead, Buhler elects to segment his text in a manner that challenges the reader to make his or her own connections between the life of the mathematician, his work, and his culture and its influences.
The reader is treated at various points in the text to fairly complex explications of some of Gauss's most significant findings and theories. For example, in "Interchapter V," Buhler (73û76) presents his own summation of Gauss's seminal work, Disq. Arithm. Here, as elsewhere (e.g., Chapter 2, "The Number-Theoretical Work), Buhler (73) presents detailed accounts of the elements of Gauss's theorems, uses mathematical examples of those formulations, and draws heavily upon original commentary by Gauss in his own texts. For the reader to grasp the import of such work û again, in the larger context of not only the life of Gauss the man, but also the socio-political context of the times in which Gauss lived and worked û it is necessary to possess a strong background in mathematics and/or science.
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