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I believe I've seen this book in a bookstore somewhere: it was a directory of integers, in ascending order, annotated with why each integer is interesting in certain aspects. e.g. the smallest (nonnegative) prime number that satisfies some condition, etc. Obviously it must be influenced by Ramanujan's taxicab number 1729. Could anyone identify this book?

It was not The Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Numbers nor Glynne-Jones' The Book of Numbers. It seemed more professional than these, and almost (if not entirely) consisted of integers.

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    $\begingroup$ Maybe Roberts's Lure of the Integers? $\endgroup$
    – HallaSurvivor
    Sep 12 at 0:51
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    $\begingroup$ I don't know the book, but I note that I would broadly be interested in seeing a website that collects interesting tidbits on various integers too. The trick, though, would be a database with only interesting or at least semi-interesting tidbits (which is perhaps too subjective to exist). $\endgroup$
    – davidlowryduda ♦
    Sep 14 at 17:36

1 Answer 1

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Found it! It's Those Fascinating Numbers (2009) by Jean-Marie De Koninck, which goes on like:

5777

  • the smallest composite Stern number (see the number 137).

5778

  • the only triangular number > 3 which is also a Lucas number (L. Ming [137]).

from 1 to the Skewes number.

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