The author of one of the best books I 'read' in college has died. Louis Leithold wrote The Calculus, which I used in my freshman year. It was the only math book I kept (usually I sold my books when the new term started) for the full four years.
I remember that it was about three days into my freshman year when I realized how much better Leithold's book was than the one I'd used in high school. I was annoyed at my high school teacher when I realized he could have used Leithold's book instead of the 400 pages of confusion we did use.
(I think it was Leithold's book – the edition we used – that had the oddest book cover I've ever seen. The cover was taken from a painting, which was the work of a Polish man, Roman Opalka. He was painting numbers from 1 to infinity. Every time he changed canvases he made the paint a little lighter so that as the numbers moved towards infinity the canvas moved towards all white.)
