Ioan James introduces and profiles sixty mathematicians from an era which saw mathematics freed from its classical origins to develop into its modern form. The characters, all born between 1700 and 1910, come from a wide range of countries, and all made an important contribution to mathematics, through their ideas, their teaching, their influence, and so on. The 2003 book is organised chronologically into ten chapters, each of which contains potted life stories of six mathematicians. The players James has chosen to portray are sufficiently representative that their stories, when read in sequence, convey in human terms something of the way in which mathematics developed.