Book and Film: Math & WWI Nurses

The Secret Lives of Numbers by Kate Kitagawa and Timothy Revell is a discussion of "Math's Unsung Trailblazers." The book focuses on many non-white European males and is filled with illustrations. Kitagawa herself joined Japan's space agency. 

One review argued that the book made the math approachable to non-specialists. I am not a specialist though did reasonably enough in math. I found the math material at times somewhat hard to plow through. The basic historical materials were more approachable.  Net found it worthwhile.

There were some films from the early 1930s on TCM. War Nurse was one of the films with Anita Page. She started in silent films, did a few talkies, and then retired. She was in a movie thirty years later and then a few low budget films over thirty years after that!  

War Nurse is a serious film (with some light moments and romantic entanglements) about nurses during WWI. It does not avoid the horrors of war. Anita plays a young American nurse who eventually gets pregnant and later dies in childbirth (how convenient). She does a good job. 

There is a well done serious scene involving the hospital being bombed near the end of the film. It ends on a happy note when the beau of another nurse comes back and we assume they will both raise the child together.   

I thought the film as a whole was worthwhile. Some of the romantic stuff and so forth was a bit tiresome. The war scenes overall are the best part of the film. And, as a whole, for a 1930 film, it is quite watchable.