I am studying Maths at varsity and I'm doing ok in it academically but I would like to do better, I find that I lose motivation a lot because I fail to see how what I am doing relates to real life, sometimes, like how is this applied in the modern world. Applications we do in class are far and few in between so I often loose interest. I think that if I had more motivation I would do better, and I would like to know if anyone knows of any good (not too technical)books about maths specifically its development and the people involved in coming up with importnat discoveries(I find that very interesting) as well as modern applications of Maths (I'm not looking for a textbook though) ideally I am looking for somethig thats almost like a novel format. Do you know what I mean?
I found that the movie "A Beautiful Mind" really got my interests up in game theory and linear algebra and think that partly because of this I did better in that section than in Calculus. This is probably because I am also studying economics.
So If you know anything that might help please let me know, it would be very much appreciated.
Thanks in advance for any comments .