[k0doque]

I advise taking a look at the mir titles or the Israel Gelfand books. Looking from it, Russian are really good at producing top notch popular science.

Tough there is no fry, their math book are almost game like, with few carefully built example and very clear explanation using only some diagram when needed (consequently their book are quite small) and the exercise are absolutely not rote based, except the first few exercice, and even then they all serve to illustrate a specific part of a concept, all the others are puzzle like problem.

Putting lots of full color image is not making math "fun", well built and interesting problem is.

[pm90]

OMG I LOVED THE MIR BOOKS! Yes, they were incredibly simple, weren't littered with images, only essential diagrams. And the English translations were very good... I can only imagine what the Russian language versions were.