Introduction: Why our skill with numbers is the greatest human achievement of all -- Numbers : how we founded civilisation -- Geometry : how we conquered and created -- Algebra : how we got organised -- Calculus : how we engineered everything -- Logarithms : how we launched science -- Imaginary numbers : how we fired up the electric age -- Statistics : how we made everything better -- Information theory : how we created the modern era -- Conclusion: Maths is a many-splendoured thing.