Congratulaions on becoming a PI – "At this point in your career, your only possible promotion is to management, where you will stop doing the work you love and use a skill set you don't have and we don't teach."
The history of pi, says the author, though a small part of the history of mathematics, is nevertheless a mirror of the history of man. Petr Beckmann holds up this mirror, giving the background of the times when pi made progress — and also when it did not, because science was being stifled by militarism or religious fanaticism.