Thinking Better: The Art of the Shortcut in Math and Life by Marcus Du Sautoy
Math relies on building blocks and shortcuts to help quickly get to conclusions. Multiplication is a fast way of doing repeated addition. Exponents are just repeated multiplication and good by done by repeating additional over and over. However, shortcuts enable doing these in simpler fashion. More advanced math like calculus are essentially just shortcuts to solve certain types of problems. There are many shortcuts that can be found in math. Spotting patterns and shortcuts can help quickly resolve problems. Likewise, in life there are many shortcuts that can be found to quickly come to an accurate conclusion. However, like math, there are also some things that require doing things the "hard way", like practicing an instrument.
The Great Unknown explores science and some of the key scientific breakthroughs. The author is a mathematician and has great reverence for the pure understanding that mathematics provides. He is also willing to explore other fields that are messier in the scientific understanding. He takes us through high level overviews of how some key scientific discoveries have been made. Many of the the great scientists were ridiculed in their day. However, many quacks are also ridiculed. The book book covers the process just as much as it covers the actual results.