In my capacity as editor of MAA Reviews, I see a lot of mathematics books written for the perhaps-mythical "general public". To my mind, some of them have very litle real mathematics in them, spending their pages instead on excited talk about possible applications, pretty pictures, or stories about mathematicians. Others seem to be at the opposite extreme, so seriously mathematical that it's hard to see how they can be accessible to the intended audience. In thinking about these books and their reviews, it's easy to begin to wonder whether there is any point to writing such books in the first place. But then I remember my uncle's books.