Let's start a short but exciting journey into the world of numbers. Its starting point is inevitably the unit, the 1. And a detail that underscores its importance: Almost one in three numbers in any random set of them begins with 1. With 2 the world breaks into two parts, but with 3 it unites again. The 4 is the number of orientation and the 5 the number of nature. However, with 6 order finally prevails in the world. And although the 7 wise men were actually 22, there is absolutely no logical explanation for the fact that the week has 7 days.

The 0 is the number that was missing from the group for a long time. At first, we didn't know it, but when it was discovered in India 2,000 years ago, it was already necessary for us. If it depended on the French Revolution, the day today would have 10 hours, each with 100 minutes, each consisting of 100 seconds. It's true that 13 disrupts the perfect internal balance of 12 — but should it bring bad luck for this reason? The number 5,607,249 is the largest ever counted and painted by a person, but not the largest in this book. With the number π we enter the world of transcendental numbers, while with ?1 the world of negative numbers.

In a completely unusual book, the well-known mathematician and founder of the famous Mathematikum museum, Albrecht Beutelspacher, guides us through an archipelago of known and unknown, plausible and improbable stories about the most important numbers.