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Each chapter of Hans Magnus Enzensberger’s The Number Devil (Granta, £6.99) recounts a dream encounter between a 12-year-old who hates mathematics and the number devil. Their slick tricks bring the subject alive, but you may want to keep a calculator to hand. The calculator may also come in useful when analysing the data in Women in Science (Harvard University Press, £12.95), in which Yu Xie and Kimberlee Shauman explore why so few women opt for a science career. They debunk plenty of myths.