A few weeks ago, we announced the shortlist for the 2025 Chalkdust Book of the Year. We award two prizes: the Chalkdust Book of the Year (as chosen by our editors), and the Chalkdust Readers’ Choice (as voted for by our readers).
Chalkdust Book of the Year 2025
The winner of the Book of the Year 2025 was picked from the shortlist by the Chalkdust editors:
The Mathematician’s Library
Thomas K Briggs
This book (Bookshop.org, Waterstones) is Thomas’ first book and guides us through mathematical books through the ages.
You can also read our full review of The Mathematician’s Library here.
This book was also voted by our readers to be the Chalkdust Readers’ Choice 2025—for the first time ever, the editors and our readers picked the same book. It’s our first double winner! Congratulations, Thomas!
The winners were selected from our shortlist of seven books released in 2025. The six other books are all also very good, and you can read our reviews of them below:
- Unequal: The Maths of When Things Do (And Don’t) Add Up by Eugenia Cheng;
- Proof: The Uncertain Science of Certainty by Adam Kucharski;
- A Little History of Mathematics by Snezana Lawrence;
- Think Like a Mathematician by Junaid Mubeen;
- The Mathematics of Origami by Joseph O’Rourke;
- Sum Stories by Robin Wilson.






