When Succession ruled TV, maybe you had room for only one HBO drama about cutthroat rich folks. Which means it might be time to catch up on this fine series, which tracks the schemes of the strivers at a fictional British investment bank. Season 3 sees Game of Thrones’ Kit Harington joining the cast as the head of a green energy firm preparing to go public. Sunday, Aug. 11, at 9 p.m., HBO/Max.

by Kate Kitagawa and Timothy Revell

The Secret Lives of Numbers is "a far more interesting read than the title might suggest," said Tom Calver in The Sunday Times (U.K.). "truly global chronological history of math," this clever book co-written by a mathematics historian and a science journalist focuses on the field's trailblazers — including many women and non-Westerners whose contributions have long been overlooked — to tie these pioneers' achievements to their often dramatic life stories. Authors Kate Kitagawa and Timothy Revell excel at explaining difficult concepts, and their book proves most satisfying "when it balances the connection between the complex math, the lives of mathematicians, and the impact their work has had on the real world."

Math's origins are murky, said Bruce Dorminey in Forbes. Some 20,000 years ago, humans in western Africa scratched tally marks on animal bones in such a way that scholars now claim it's conceivable that they already understood the importance of prime numbers. From that starting point, Kitagawa and Revell "serve up a surprisingly enlightening account of how humanity harnessed numbers in a way that helped us devise calendars and methods of crop rotation," leaping from Mesopotamia to China to India, South America, and Europe to chart the path from counting systems to calculus and beyond. Familiar names such as Pythagoras and Isaac Newton share space with lesser-known figures, including Hypatia, a mathematician in 5th-century Alexandria who was renowned in her time and murdered by a Christian mob. Elsewhere, the Indian mathematician and astronomer Madhava of Sangamagrama is credited with contributions to calculus predating Newton's by three centuries. Calculus, in turn, emerges as "one of the most useful strides in human history."

Kitagawa and Revell's determination to spotlight women and non-Westerners "may divide readers," said Chris Allnutt in the Financial Times. "But this is not a history with familiar figures subtracted, it is a holistic approach with new ones added in." The authors' "pleasingly patient" narrative takes pains to ensure that readers keep pace, and "rejoices in the pursuit of discovery" wherever it occurs. "Clearly there is more than mere numbers at stake: Mathematics is a search for order and understanding in a generally disordered and incomprehensible world. That Kitagawa and Revell should strive for a complete picture of the subject reflects more than just a zeitgeist for social reckoning; it also represents the only way that a suitably accurate history of mathematics should occur."

The novelist who plumbed women's inner lives

When Edna O'Brien's debut novel was published in 1960, a priest in her hometown burned a copy and a local official said she should be kicked naked through the streets. The book was The Country Girls, in which two friends leave their stifling Irish village and find freedom — and sexual liberation — in Dublin. It was banned in Ireland for its frank sexuality, as were two subsequent books — The Lonely Girl and Girls in Their Married Bliss — that followed the pair through marriage and divorce. But it was also lauded for its incisive portrait of women struggling to navigate their passions and longings in a patriarchal world. In a writing career spanning more than two dozen books, it was a subject O'Brien returned to repeatedly. "I am seen as a genteel romantic writer," she said. "But the reality is I am a savage writer with a savage eye. I write about the things we are not supposed to speak about."

Born in a village in County Clare, O'Brien "was the youngest of a large family with a father who was a drinker and a gambler," said The Guardian. A solitary child who wandered the woods dreaming up stories, she spent five years at a convent school before moving to Dublin at 18. There she studied to be a pharmacist, married a Czech-Irish novelist, and began entering short stories in newspaper competitions. After the couple moved to London with their young sons, she worked as a reader for a publisher, "which soon commissioned her to produce a novel." She wrote The Country Girls in "a fury of inspiration" in under three weeks, said The New York Times. While its sexual content "appalled many," she was hailed as a "literary trailblazer" and reaped "international recognition."

After divorcing, O'Brien "reinvented herself as the hostess of swinging 1960s parties," said The Telegraph. Literary figures "mingled with A-list musicians and film stars," and she was wooed by actor Robert Mitchum. She "lived long enough to turn from outcast to icon" in Ireland, winning the Irish PEN lifetime achievement award in 2001. She worked well into her 80s and credited a "turbulent" love life with providing inspiration. "A lot of the material of my life has been ripe for literature, but a bit of a handicap for what is laughingly called everyday life," she said. "But that's the bargain."